The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Why APC must wield the big stick

    What Buhari, Tinubu and their colleagues are being called upon to do is not just an inauguration of a party to win an election. What these times call for are men with eyes on history; men who would emulate the federalists Hamilton and Adams, the Republicans Jefferson and Madison of USA of the 1790s, the British enlightened elite that established parties as modernizing agents after the Britain reforms of 1832, their French counterparts who did the same after French revolution of 1789 and the Japanese leaders after the Meiji Restoration of 1867”.

    The above was an unsolicited advice to APC, in a piece titled ‘What Nigerians expect of Buhari and Tinubu’ dated January 31, 2013 following its registration. It stemmed from a critical analysis of our 50 years in the wilderness starting with the destruction of the budding modernizing political parties that heralded in our independence in 1960 by the  ill-informed military, the13 years experiment under Babangida and Abacha’s ‘army of anything is possible’ that arrogantly and fraudulently claimed it could decree political parties, and 16 years of PDP, described by John Campbell as ‘an elite cartel with no ideological or programmatic basis, but simply as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’ .

    Besides state formation which gave the western world almost 400 year’s head start, modernizing political parties served as major instruments for their socio economic development and industrial revolution. We were also on course in the pre- and post independence years when with the instrumentality of NPC, as modernization agents,  Ahmadu Bello  ‘with an annual budget of N44m which is less than what a local government collects today, maintained law and order, built Ahmadu Bello University, Ahmadu Bello Stadium and the NNDC conglomerate in addition to well paved roads’. This contrasts with today’s North where according Nuhu Ribadu, the erstwhile anti-corruption Czar, ‘the 19 northern state governors and the 414 local governments have nothing to show for the N8.3 trillion that accrued to them between 1999 and 2010’. And similarly, Awo through the instrumentality of AG as a modernizing agent was able to revolutionalise agriculture through farm settlement scheme, prosecuted free education, free health for children and built industrial estates and the first television in Africa.

    If APC is to fulfil its historic role of turning what it has painstakingly put together after personal sacrifices into a modernizing agent despite the June 9 Saraki coup described by professors  Itse Sagay, the nation’s conscience as ‘a victory for impunity, a victory for fraud and a victory for political desperation and indiscipline’ and Anwalu Yadudu, former Dean of a Faculty of Law, BUK,  as ‘lies in the face of democratic ideals’ since Saraki’s emergence stemmed from ‘a flawed election by a fraction of yet to be constituted senate’,  it must today wield the big stick.

    Buhari and APC must be ready to work with those senators who are ready to be part of history. There have been too many marriages of convenience and betrayals .The First Republic was wrecked by haggling sharing of positions by NPC and NCNC coalition partners. NPN and NPP suffered the same fate. June 12 was traded off by self-serving political leaders. New PDP pulled down PDP over sharing of confiscated national patrimony. Now even before a template for change is set, Saraki who capitalized on the absence of 51 of his elected APC colleagues, traded off the deputy senate seat which by convention belongs to the majority party and got adopted as Senate President by 49 PDP and eight APC ‘like minds senators’. He has gone ahead to consolidate his hold on power by relying on the opposition to deny his party the right to choose its majority leader in a house controlled by his party by 60 to 49. Saraki’s arrogance and disdain for APC leaders portend danger to the health of APC. It will amount to a betrayal of millions of Nigerians for whom ‘hope rises eternal’ if APC oligarchy fails to wield the big stick and allows history to repeat itself.

    Nigerians find Saraki’s action repulsive. But even more hideous was Ekweremadu’s sordid revelation about those behind the surreptitious PDP takeover of the two houses during his celebration of his pyrrhic victory two weeks back. Without restraint, he had disclosed to his enthusiastic supporters in the East how ex-President Jonathan was briefed about the immoral act and how his blessing was secured from far away New York. He told us Tony Anenih was the consultant and adviser to his group. The ‘wheeling and dealing’, he revealed took place inside David Mark’s sitting room (he probably meant his luxury hotel suite paid for by the taxpayers  since Mark had no official house having earlier allegedly bought off the senate presidential mansion through PDP monetization policy.) Ekweremadu also spoke of contributions of other PDP leading light like Uche Secondus, the PDP acting National Chairman, who vigorously campaigned against the use of ‘card readers’ during the last election. Others whose name he did not mention like Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo, Ayo Fayose of Ekiti and Atiku Abubakar, we all saw on national television  as they moved around mobilizing nPDP or read their congratulatory messages to Saraki even after the party leadership had declared his action treacherous.

    By contrast, Nigerians who massively voted for Buhari and APC can make a clear distinction between APC leaders, Ekweremadu’s PDP sponsors who also doubled as Saraki’s trading partners. In spite of our celebrated collective amnesia, frustrated Nigerians could not have forgotten so soon that they only recently voted out Jonathan  for presiding over monumental corruption, and five years of reign of impunity; that David Mark along with Ekweremadu for eight years jointly presided over the most expensive legislature in the world where half a million naira was cornered by each senator  as dressing allowance in a nation where the minimum wage of N18,000, has been in arrears in payment for about eight months in at least 20 of the 36 states; what of the role of Anenih ‘the fixer’, in the suppressed ‘Heineken Lokpobiri Senate transport probe report which alleged that from 1999 to 2009, some N645 billion was spent on 4,752 kilometres of road; short-changing the government to the tune of N49 million on each kilometre of road purportedly constructed.

    It must still be fresh in their memories that Saraki himself was chased out of PDP that accused him of contributing to the collapse of the banking sector through alleged mishandling of depositors monies in his father’s defunct ‘Societe Generale’ and the defunct Intercontinental Bank where multi-billion naira loan was allegedly mysteriously written off; that Atiku Abubakar has never been loyal to anyone including ex-President  Obasanjo who was alleged to have prostrated  to stop him from derailing his second term; that Mimiko who joined PDP ‘governors without character’ who proclaimed 16 greater than 19, like Atiku cannot be loyal to anyone but himself and of course Nigerians know Fayose is the sole administrator of Ekiti who stood by while his thugs beat up a judge presiding over his case, deployed the services of the same thugs to chase out 19 of the state legislators  out of town while he ran the state as sole administrator.

    And if only for the above baleful legacies of PDP leaders, APC oligarchy should entertain no fear of backlash from Nigerians if it wields the big stick. It will only hasten Saraki’s exit who will be compelled to rejoin the ‘like minds senators’ while APC is allowed to fulfil its historic role. For embattled APC oligarchy and irrepressible Saraki, it will be a win-win situation.

  • Buhari’s possible place in history

    President Buhari, while speaking with Nigerians resident in South Africa recently, said, “I wish I became Head of State when I was…a young man. Now at 72, there is a limit to what I can do”.

    Quite a number of Nigerians have responded negatively to this statement, some of them claiming that it shows that Buhari is not fit, on account of his age, to be our president. I see it differently. A man who can make an admission like that is forthright and deserves to be trusted – and also deserves whatever help each of us Nigerians can give him. I have felt, since then, much more than I felt before, that I can trust Buhari as president of my country.

    Being a slightly older man than he, I know what he is talking about. When you are in your seventies, if you are the kind of person that dreams great dreams, you see a million worthy things that should be done and that you should do in the interest of your people or country; but you know that though your spirit itches to go, your body is not really up to much of the task.

    In that sort of situation, if you are in a position of power, and if you are the foolish kind, you try to hide the truth by posing as strong and conquering and invincible – and you end up wrecking yourself and wrecking a lot of things. If you are the wise kind, you own up your limitations to your friends – and you earn empathy, understanding, loyalty and help, and you end up achieving more than you would otherwise have achieved. Napoleon Bonaparte used to say, “I try always to rise above myself”. For a ruler or leader, part of the secret of rising above oneself is to let one’s team mates and helpers love and feel honoured to use themselves – their minds, expertise, wisdom, muscles and all – to serve one’s noble purposes for one’s country.

    As a Nigerian who has seen, and been somewhat part of, the Nigerian political experience since the late 1950s, I therefore humbly offer the following as help to President Buhari. Principally, I counsel him to keep things simple. If the load is kept simple, even an older man than Buhari can carry it successfully. If he lets it get complicated and tortuous, it will bog down, and it will hurt him and hurt Nigeria.

    One serious reality of the Nigerian situation today is that Nigerian politicians have built up an enormous amount of expertise in crookedness. As people say in Kenya, “Where there is a Nigerian there is a way”.  Kenyans don’t say that admiringly; they say it spitefully and derogatorily. Witness a couple of recent prominent instances of this expert crookedness: Members of the Nigerian National Assembly vote for their wages and allowances absolutely unreasonable amounts of money; and then they make those facts a total secret from the people of Nigeria –the owners of the National Assembly.

    Here is another: A senator who wants to be elected president of Senate, knowing that many in his party have someone else in mind, seizes advantage of the group absence of many senators of his own party from the Senate Chamber and, behind their back, sneaks in his election as Senate President, using the help of members of another party. And yet another: The Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives say that they had appointed the other officials of the two houses before the directive came from their party about the persons to appoint. In the presidential system worldwide, don’t Senate Presidents and House Speakers take the directives from their parties first?

    Can you imagine anything more crooked than these things? Could things like these possibly happen in the Nigerian government when Buhari and I were boys? Friends of the new Senate President say he was “smart”! Were our politicians that “smart” in those days? In what other country are the politicians this “smart”?

    That is the environment in which President Buhari has to work today. Obviously, he does not have the smartness of this crowd. Therefore, he should not try to compete with them in their muddy waters. He should not even go near their muddy waters.  He must let it be seen by all who work with him that his actions are open and straight-forward, and that he values his integrity. Politicians and others will approach him with all sorts of crooked packages – packages containing plans for stealing and sharing public money, or clever plans to defraud, or criminal plots for electoral fraud, or plots for ethnic group advantage over other ethnic groups – or even over the rest of Nigeria. Buhari should let the whole of Nigeria know transparently that such packages have no chance at all with him. In short, he can, and he should, establish for our country the ethical backbone for a new Presidency. He promised change. We voted for change.

    Keeping it simple also demands that the structure of the Nigerian federation should be aligned harmoniously with Nigeria’s ethnic national composition. It is simpler to walk with the truth than to keep trying to force the way forward with falsehood. If Buhari chooses to keep forcing the way forward with falsehood, he will only be complicating his load – and the load will bog down and he will hurt himself and hurt Nigeria.

    The truth is that Nigeria is a country made up of many different ethnic nationalities, each living in its own homeland, having its own culture and history, its own desires, and its own self-image and pride. Pooling all power, resources and resource control together in Nigeria’s central government, as has been done since the 1960s, is living a destructive falsehood, and it will never work. That is why Nigeria teeters on the brink of failure. The love of Nigerians for their different nationalities is much stronger than Nigeria’s most influential politicians like to think. The countless millions of us who cherish the integrity of our nationalities will never give up the fight – and that means that we will never cease harassing whoever is president of Nigeria to lead us to restructure our federation. Restructuring our federation s is the most important change.

    Finally, to keep his load simple, President Buhari must loyally keep his team intact and working. The ones who have worked with him in the past three years to put an alliance together, fought night and day by his side on the campaign trail, and mobilized the needed resources for the struggle, certainly deserve his loyalty. Trying to evade that loyalty, or letting others damage the team, will only whip up a truculent and unending war around him, with the possibility that massive numbers of citizens of whole regions could become involved – and that would make his load become impossibly complex. Naturally, his allies have their political enemies, while many who used to fight against him and his allies will now become his friends too. Of course, the president of Nigeria must be open to all Nigerians; but the world will adjudge Buhari as lacking character if he now denies his allies and compromises his team. It will also show that the promises of change made by him and his allies were fake all along. Buhari can carve for himself an honourable place in the history of Nigeria and of Africa.

  • Terrorism: A historical perspective – 4

    In order to put these movements in perspective, it will be clearer if one looks at religious movements in the Sudan broadly defined as a whole. In the modern history of the Western and Eastern Sudan stretching from the Senegal valley across to the upper valleys of the Nile, Islamic fundamentalism has played a very important role. The most well known of Islamic revolutions in the Western Sudan is that of  Usman Dan Fodio, whose son Muhammad Bello and brother Abdullahi founded the Sokoto caliphate. Usman Dan Fodio was an itinerant preacher against syncretism, corruption and misrule among apparently Muslim rulers in Hausaland.

    Islam had been well planted in Hausaland since about the 8th century A.D particularly in Kano and Katsina with many clerics from North Africa visiting Kano and Katsina to lecture at mosques there. But over time, the Muslim rulers of these areas became more materialistic, corrupt and dictatorial in the conduct of state affairs. Taxes were arbitrarily levied on and collected from the peasants and the Nomads. It was these grievances that Usman Dan Fodio exploited to lead a rebellion against the Habe rulers between 1804 and 1808.

    This movement succeeded beyond his wildest dreams and drove away from their thrones Hausa, Nupe rulers and the Yoruba ruler of Ilorin. There is no doubt that Usman Dan Fodio was a pious man but one needs more than piety to found an empire. The political and military prowess of his son Muhammad Bello and Abdullahi his brother facilitated the emergence of the Sokoto caliphate. By the time the British overthrew the caliphate; almost all the evils of the Habe rulers had resurfaced in the caliphate and had undermined the moral fabric of the state. This point was proved by the Satiru revolt of 1905/1906 led by the blind cleric Saybu Dan Makafo who was able to mobilise people against the corrupt practices of the caliphate leadership and its English and French successors both in Sokoto and Dosso.

    The example of the Fulani-led revolt and the creation of the Sokoto caliphate were followed by fellow Fulanis in Massina now part of Mali and led by Sheikh Amadu Bakr Lobbo El-amin in 1810 and between that time and 1845, an ascetic type of Islam was imposed on the community and the Sharia and Islamic jurisprudence were strictly followed. A much wider movement in the Western Sudan was led by Al-hajj Umar Tall. He was a Tukolor, a group closely linked with the Fulani who also established along the upper Nile valleys, a so-called Segu-Tukolor empire in which he imposed himself on the largely Malinke ethnic groups in those areas.

    Al-hajj Umar is well known in West African history as the man who was responsible for spreading the Tijanniya brotherhood, a revolutionary form of Islamic tariqa that preached equality of all peoples. These three Islamic revolutions by and large purified the society and brought new regimes based on the Sharia that were more favourable to the ordinary people. Although over time their decline and eventual fall became inevitable. These movements had positive impact on the Western and Central Sudan. Even though they involved some element of violence, it was violence with a positive purpose.

    A much bigger and militant movement employing modern methods of warfare as well as sophisticated arms took place in what was then known as the Egyptian Sudan in 1881. This has gone down into history as the Mahdia or the Mahdist state which lasted between 1881 and 1898.

    The Sudan was for several decades under Turko-Egyptian control and oppression in the form of arbitrary taxation, corruption and inept rule was characteristic of the regime. It was not too difficult for a millenarian movement led by Mohammed Ahmad who proclaimed himself Al mahdi in the tradition of Islamic thought prevailing in that area. This was based on a doctrine that in difficult times, an “Imam of the age” would come and take over rulership of the state, purify the society and bring the society nearer to God.

    Sheikh Mohammed Ahmad declared himself this “Imam of the age” and the Messiah ‘Mahdi’ the people were waiting for. He was able to found a state between 1881 and 1898 before the combined forces of the Egyptians and the British defeated him under a Bible-waving General Charles Gordon, whose death aroused national sentiment in England. The man who later became British Prime Minister and Second World War hero, Winston Churchill took part in the fighting against the Mahdist leadership. The Mahdia has left an indelible imprint on Sudan even up till today and the Umma, a political party led by the grandson of the Mahdi, the Oxford educated Sadek el-Mhadi has been in and out of power several times.

    It is quite clear that any movement claiming to be an Islamic movement should aim at purifying society and since Islam generally does not separate politics from religion, such a movement must have a plan of creating a state in which the Sharia would be the law and some kind of theocracy would be the mode of governance.

    The closest thing we have to Boko Haram therefore was the Maitasine uprising in Kano in 1980 and its blind fury and murderous campaign against the society generally did not conform to any reformist paradigm of Jihad. It did not appear to have had a programme of creating a state or replacing the then political status quo. It was also secretive and syncretist in nature. It mixed Islam and traditional African religion. The Maitasine revolt however was on such a scale that a division of the Nigerian army had to be deployed against it. Muhammad Marwa its leader was apparently killed in the campaign against them.

    This Maitasine revolt later reared up its ugly head in 1982 in Yola, Adamawa state and Bulunkutu, Borno State at the outskirts of Maiduguri. It was also on the same level of violence as the one in Kano and thousands of people perished in Yola and Maiduguri. This latter offshoot of the Maitasine was apparently led by Musa Makaniki who after the violence in Yola escaped to Gombe and from there to the Cameroons before he was caught in 2004.

  • The sands of time

    Shortly after former President Goodluck Jonathan stepped into office in 2010, following the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua, his most pressing challenge was appointing an electoral umpire. With the nation’s experience in the hands of Prof Maurice Iwu, Nigerians were praying that Jonathan should not make a wrong choice. They wanted an electoral umpire with integrity and sagacity. Riding on the crest of public goodwill, Jonathan, at every opportunity, promised to give us a man of honour; a man who will not sell his conscience for a mess of porridge.

    When he finally named Prof Attahiru Jega as Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman in June 2010, many agreed that he made a right choice.  But will Jega do the right thing? Or will he follow the footsteps of many of his predecessors, who saw their position as an opportunity to enrich themselves? These were some of the worries of the public, who reasoned that our electoral fortunes lie in the hands of the INEC chief.

    For a free and fair election, the INEC chief must, like Caesar’s wife, be above board. Where the umpire is of questionable character, the electoral process is at risk. He will destroy a process, which, by virtue of his position, he is expected to protect.  In the discharge of his duty, the INEC chairman must be purpose driven; he must be ready to make sacrifices and to step on toes.

    It goes without saying that he must be uncompromising. Herein lies the enormous responsibility thrust upon the INEC chief and this is why many are against the appointment of such a person by the sitting president. But no matter how we all feel about the issue, it is a constitutional duty, which only the president can discharge. They prefer that the INEC chief be appointed by persons that will not contest election to ensure transparency of the process. Their fear is that where the president, who is the appointing authority stands for election,  the INEC chief may be favourably disposed to him.  Simply put, he may rig for the president?

    Such fears are not unfounded. We run a system where he who pays the piper calls the tune. We have seen how in the past electoral umpires openly showed bias for the government in power because of the belief that they owe allegiance to the administration whose head appointed them and not the country. The way Iwu conducted the 2007 general elections remain a reference point. Those were no elections. Iwu did everything to ensure that the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) returned to power all because he was appointed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo whose body language indicated that he wanted the late President Yar’Adua to succeed him.

    What Iwu did not know is that he did not have to kowtow to the government of the day in the discharge of his duty. The INEC chair is constitutionally protected as long as he does his job conscientiously.

    Where an electoral umpire is open and transparent the people will know; where he is corrupt and inept they will also know. The people are no fools; they can see what is happening, no matter what the INEC chair or those in power may say. The INEC job is delicate; it is also a thankless job and a grave yard of reputations.

    Many have gone in there and come out with their reputations rubbished. This is why those lucky to get the job must do it honourably. Jega, Iwu’s successor, has shown that one can hold that delicate job and still come out with his head held high. We cannot call Jega a saint because saints do not walk the face of the earth, but he proved that you can be an electoral umpire without bringing opprobrium unto yourself. He acquitted himself well  in the two elections he conducted in 2011 and a few months ago.

    His conduct of the last general elections is especially commendable. It was his calmness in the face of extreme provocation on March 31 that saved a smooth electoral process from being truncated by forces of darkness led by  a so-called Elder Godsday Orubebe. Jega navigated the landmines planted by Orubebe and his comrade-in-arm Col Bello Fadile and ensured the successful conclusion of the March 28 presidential election. If those landmines had exploded, we would have had another June 12 on our hands and another long, dark night. Thank God for Jega and his superb handling of the situation.

    No good thing lasts forever. Last Tuesday, Jega bowed out after a successful five-year tenure. He has left a worthy legacy, which his successor must not only build on, but also strive to surpass.

    Black Friday

    As they sat inside the bus, their minds would have travelled far. They would have thought of the things they would do once they get home. After a tedious first semester, they needed time to cool off and prepare for the second semester. Their first semester examination would have occupied their minds and their discussions during the trip. In their subconscious minds, they would have reflected on how they answered some questions and attempted to award themselves marks. That is the way of students. After examinations, they sit back and assess their performance and play the examiner by grading themselves. You could imagine the fun the students were having as the 18-seater bus left the garage for Lagos. It is a journey usually done under one hour, if the traffic permits. But on this day, the trip ended even before it began.

    Inside the bus were nine students of the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) in Ago Iwoye, Ogun State. There were three other passengers with them, including the driver. The journey had started well until they got to Ilishan. Since the bus was Lagos bound, the driver never expected that any vehicle going towards the Benin end of the expressway would share the same lane with him. So, before he knew what was happening a container-laden truck driving against traffic had run into him. The unlatched container fell on the bus, killing eight of the nine students and the remaining passengers. It was a monumental tragedy in which some promising young Nigerians were killed in their prime. How can we console the bereaved families? What do we say to the parents of these students? It is sad to have lost these students in such a way. My heart goes out to their parents.

    May the late students – Eunice Odubanjo Oluwadamilola (200-Level Political Science), Mariam Omolade Ogunnoiki (100-Level Education), Yetunde Aribiola Elizabeth (100-Level Biochemistry), Suliat Adams Oluwatobi (100-Level Accounting), Funmilayo Pampam Latifat (100-Level Chemical Science), Christiana Asade Ibukun (200-Level Law), Ayoola Sheriff Gbolahan (100-Level Agricultural Engineering) and Olatunji Dairo Michael (400-Level Physics) rest in the bosom of the Lord. We wish the accident’s lone survivor, Akinbo Laughter Ibukunoluwa (300-Level Chemical Science), speedy recovery. May this ginger the government to move against these killer truck drivers. They have done enough havoc on our roads.

  • The way the music dies…

    I do not hereby profess the gift of clairvoyance but very soon, Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun a.k.a Wizkid, Tiwa Savage, Peter and Paul Okoye (P-Square) and very sadly, Olamide Adedeji a.k.a Olamide, will go the way of Dapo Oyebanji (D Banj). Each of their last albums and now ubiquitous singles are beginning to sound alike. Their music is criminally routine and devoid of soul. This is because they murder quality and artistry in a frantic jostle for money, unearned greatness and interminable minutes in the spotlight.

    Every song is borne of a story. Every artiste should tell a story; the nature of message (s) contained in the artiste’s story however, depends on the artiste’s inventiveness and innate constitution. The essence and quality of their stories are responsible for their eventual rise to acclaim and even immortality. On the flipside, it could accelerate their descent into obscurity even as their music fades like the mad rant of  What are our artistes’ stories?

    Olamide for instance, keeps screaming about the same thing in his music; it does not require much depth or discernment to grasp the essence of his music. This is an extremely talented young artiste who believes someone and everyone out there are out to kill or neuter him.

    His mythical foes are legion and he squanders priceless seconds cursing and articulating puerile vituperation. The poor boy desperately seeks to intone menace and an insolent hip hop culture that has led many talented artistes to untimely grave and many more to their tethers end.

    Worried music enthusiasts may however, seek solace in the fact that Olamide, like many of his ilk, are poor copycats of pathetic studio gangsters.

    Many of these artistes engage in mock battles or microphone wars to project non-existent rancour among them. For instance, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that the oft rumoured beef or supremacy wars between Olamide and his over-hyped foe ‘Chairman’ is a ruse. Likewise the latter’s seemingly condescending jibes in response.

    Lest we forget Eedris Abdul Kareem, Steven Ugochukwu a.k.a Ruggedman, Timaya, Terry G and so on who persistently refused to grow up and evolve until they faded into nothingness. While Ruggedman rode to acclaim criticizing Eedris AbdulKareem and his record label, Eedris, smarting from the sting of Ruggedman’s jibes, channeled priceless music industry wisdom and ignored him. Although he went on to outlive Ruggedman in the industry, the two artistes are virtually non-existent at the moment.

    Save occasional appearances at the now ubiquitous red carpet events, very few of their fans would have glimpses of them.

    Many Nigerian artistes , like the prototypical damaged good or fame junkie throng the ‘red carpet’ at major events like fashion shows, reality shows, younger artistes’ album launches and so on to assault our senses and peace with infinitely puerile rants and antics that range from the vulgar to the delinquent.

    In one of Wizkid’s songs, the youngster lapsed into a hideous drone of “I want your body sleeping in my bed” intermittently lacing it with “Tinubu eleniyan, Fashola eleniyan…” and so on. The song is hideously woven together, ruining the airwaves and forming knots in the eardrums of discerning music enthusiasts. But like the deluge of infantile purring and drivel persistently churned out by new generation Nigerian artistes, you could still dance or at least bob your head to the beat.

    ‘If you make a record about a gun, on that very same record or album there’s gotta be a record about not using a gun. If you’re making a record on the bitches or the hoes, there’s got to be a record about your aunt who worked all of the days of her life to send all her children to college,’ said Darryl McDaniels of the RunDMC fame recently. The American rap artiste bemoaning the descent of the American hip hop culture – which Nigerian artistes are unquestioningly emulating – said: ‘It seems like stupid America celebrates a person that says “yeah I’m a drug dealer, I’m bringing the drugs into the hood.”

    While admitting that his group intoned violence in their heydays, he argued that they backed it up with something good and positive. “The reason why hip hop exists is because it started out with good intentions, once all the good intentions left, the music became polluted, it became disrespectful it became immature,” he said.

    At least, for Nigeria’s middling ‘hip hop,’ ‘afro pop’ or ‘afro hip hop’ aficionados, it foots the bills for the easy girls, flashy cars and bling-bling. More importantly, it provides the wads that fit into colourful envelopes of various shapes and sizes, the soul of entertainment journalism. Perhaps put more precisely, the life-boat of charlatans selling off news pages – that ought to be hard-earned – for as little as N10, 000 for two pages and N5, 000 or N3, 000 for a page, while passing themselves off as entertainment writers to the detriment of journalists who would remain true to journalism and music.

    The music died because they’ve killed it. Shame on the artistes perverting the music for the love of fame and money. Shame on those of us who diminish the music in order to find it and sing it. Shame being the fitting apparel to those of us who make smaller, the luxuriant tropes of the bight of the muse.

    Shame on all powerful and giant telecommunication networks spending a few millions to rip us off hundreds of hard earned millions in the name of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)…in the name of perverse music reality shows. Shame on the producer, director, video-jockey (VJ), dancer, artiste and songwriter perpetually burying the essence of the music for the sake of a few desperate Naira, and more.

    And yet the greater shame on the Nigerian press for whom and what we have become to the music; we, the hideous trolls dishing discordant tunes to the sound of music; we, the standard-bearers on whose watch the music skits and grinds to a stop.

    Thus we go nameless and artless in music; the music we make becomes the echo of something else, like nothingness and vile. The artistes we make and celebrate annoy us, disrespect us and confound us. And the music they make is hardly the work of genius. It’s simply deafening and hogwash. Bet you hear their crinkle and chirp like crickets gone nuts: Senge Menge…Wiskolowiska…Je ka collabo…Baby je ki’n sangolo, sangolo eee…I’m in love with two women; I don’t know which one to take; and you could still dance to it. Do you?

    The readers whose interests we ought to serve and whose interests we continually compromise for the love of the “flava” have decided to jettison their loyalty and reverence of our approximation of how a particular song sounds or what emotions it evokes, however articulate it may be, ever since they discovered that it’s not just that we have sold out professionalism for the “flava” but that we have increasingly become shorn of the mandatory musical gen and artistry – while parading an army of bedazzled wanna-be music critics and bootlickers masquerading as entertainment reporters and writers.

    Truth is, our music suffers and flutters due to the dearth of competent music journalism, among other factors. The best that we have done and that we could ever possibly do is to serve as errand boys and publicists to every wanna be music star, acclaimed star and charlatan with N10, 000, N5, 000 and well slanted interview plants, prepared in question and answer formats by individual artistes’ in-house publicists and managers.

    Just recently, an esteemed reader and music enthusiast marveled why seven national dailies would parade a struggling music star and music talent hunt finalist on their entertainment cover. The answer is simple: she got “flava.”

  • Stewing in their own juice

    IT WAS a problem waiting for him even before he assumed office on May 29. One way or the other, he has to address the matter, especially as the governors are speaking with one voice on it. Many of the governors are hard pressed; their states are facing a cash crunch never before experienced. They cannot pay salaries – in a state or two, workers have not been paid for 11 months. It sounds incredible, but it is true. This is the new face of the Civil Service, a sector where many scramble for job because of the security..

    Last Tuesday, the governors poured their hearts out to President Muhammadu Buhari on what they have been going through. As chief executives of their states, they have to make provisions for capital and recurrent expenditure. For now, many of the states do not have the wherewithal to execute capital projects. Is it a state that cannot pay salary – a recurrent expenditure – that will think of embarking on capital projects, such as  building roads and hospitals? Where will the money come from in these lean times?

    Didn’t the Federal and state governments have a contingency plan for a day like this? They did. In order to avoid this kind of problem, both tiers of government resolved to establish the Excess Crude Account (ECA). The ECA was created to hold the excess from the price of crude oil, which is the benchmark for our budget.  For instance, if the budget is based on $65 per barrel and the price of oil in the international market is $80 or $90, the excess, which will be either $15 or $25, will automatically go to the ECA. It was tagged by our economic experts as saving for the ‘’rainy day’’.

    Ironically, it is raining today in many states, but the cash in the ECA cannot save them. They cannot draw on the ECA because the account is overdrawn. There is virtually nothing left in the account to bail out the distressed states. $2.078 billion is said to be left in the ECA. Because he was on his way out, former President Goodluck Jonathan chose to ignore the states’ cries for help. Was it that he ignored them or that he could not do anything in the circumstance because his administration was in the same morass? Under him, the government was borrowing to pay workers, because unlike the states, it had the facilities for obtaining such loans.

    Now, the chickens have come home to roost. The Federal and state governments are in dire straits. Though the Federal Government’s case may be a bit better because it has what it takes to weather the storm, but the same cannot be said of the states, many of which are today seeking a bail out from Buhari to meet their obligations. Did the states find themselves in this quagmire because of their  financial recklessness? How come the states cannot today find succour in the ECA, which we were made to believe would be the cure-all for such financial distress?

    The problem is the ECA was killed before the states ran into trouble. It was killed instalmentally by the Federal and state governments through ad-hoc withdrawals. Whenever they ran short of cash, they ran to the ECA for bail out. See where that has led the states. Since ECA is a political arrangement, the Federal and state governments should have been more prudent in utilising the funds; they weren’t because they saw it as  free money. What did they use the cash for? Did they not use the money to plan for their states’ future?

    Does it not defeat the purpose of ECA if states cannot draw on it when in dire need? Yet, the ECA’s mandate is to act as a stabilisation fund, close budget deficits that are products of oil price volatility and to potentially fund domestic infrastructure investments. The falling oil price exposed the ECA’s Achilles’ heels. If oil price had continued to rise, the Federal and state governments would have continued to live a false life, believing that the good times will continue to roll. Where did all the money collected from the ECA go? The Federal and state governments should be able to tell us what they did with the billions of dollars they shared before the distressed states can ask for bail out.

    Where do they want Buhari to get money from? The same ECA, which Jonathan and his Minister of Finance Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said was empty because everything had been shared? As the saying goes, you cannot have your cake and eat it. Having exhausted the ECA, the states should devise means of generating funds instead of running to the Federal Government cap in hand, begging for a life-line. I pity the states, but honestly, they cannot be absolved from the misspending of the ECA by the Jonathan administration. They cannot; they are as guilty as that government.

    The states should not burden Buhari with their cash crisis early in the life of his administration. They should allow the administration to settle down and face the huge task ahead. The president has his own problems, which he inherited from Jonathan; so we should let him face squarely the task of revamping the economy and not tie him down with the mess the states created for themselves. ‘’With a virtually empty treasury’’, which Buhari said he inherited from his predecessor, where do the states expect him to get money to give them? Ask the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to print money and cause hyper-inflation?

    The lesson in all of this is that we should not lend ourselves to illegality. Was there any need for ECA? The answer is no because the Constitution in Section 80 (1) provides for a Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) as a special purpose vehicle for keeping excess funds. And the CRF could only be drawn from with the National Assembly’s approval. This provision may have been made to avoid an abuse of the fund. But the Federal and state governments found a way to beat the provision by creating ECA, which they could draw from at will. But see who is crying today! Unfortunately, our poor workers are being made to pay the price for their leaders’ profligacy.

  • President Buhari: This is the moment for change

    For nearly six decades, we Nigerians have been mangling and wrecking our country. Our leaders and rulers took the God- given resources and wealth in our land and turned them into dangerous weapons for breeding a culture of almost sub-human greed among our powerful and influential men and women, for pushing abject and hopeless poverty into the lives of our people, and for giving our country an image that makes most of the rest of the world fear, hate and despise her. The day of reckoning is here now.

    In the past three weeks since President Buhari was sworn in, we have, in various ways, come face to face with the truth of the evil we have done to our country and to ourselves. President Buhari has told us again and again that our country is in serious trouble. The Nigerian treasury inherited by him is empty. At the same time, he is being shown mountains of debt in all directions. And he is being shown utter confusion in the management of Nigeria’s public accounts. He is finding that nobody can tell him, because nobody knows, exactly how many accounts the Federal Government has.

    Some of his political opponents, especially high officials of the ousted Jonathan presidency, are doing all they can to convince us that Buhari is only playing politics, that things are not as bad as he says, and that parts of the debts are not owned by the Federal Government but by the state governments. But the facts are too plainly manifest to admit of politicking. More than 21 states cannot pay their workers’ salaries. Monthly allocations to the states have been slashed lower and lower in the course of the last year of Jonathan’s presidency. Months before Buhari took over, some states have failed to get their allocations when due. And now we are learning that even the Federal Government itself has been unable to pay salaries in certain federal departments and agencies since the final months of the Jonathan presidency.

    Of course, none of us can say, honour bright, that Jonathan single-handedly wrecked our country. But it is certainly true that he came, he inherited a country that has been gradually dying for decades, and he made it die a whole lot more. Virtually all the successive governments of Nigeria since 1962 have been motivated to destabilize and weaken Nigeria. Jonathan followed that tradition and intensified it.

    And, unfortunately, very unfortunately, the recent stages of Nigeria’s self-destruction have been taking place against a worldwide background of real and fundamental declines. The mineral oil wealth – the mighty power that led us into the dangerous euphoria in which we gradually abandoned productive enterprises, centralized all resource control,and destroyed all morality in our country – has been falling in the world.  From as high as over $125 only a year ago, the price of crude oil fell to as low as just over $50, and now hovers in the range of about $60 – plunging Nigeria into serious difficulties. It is estimated that, for Nigeria to be able to balance its budget, oil prices would have to rise back to $120 per barrel – and nobody thinks that that can happen again.

    According to experts on the subject, the worldwide glut that has been causing the fall in oil prices is not likely to end soon. And the development of new oil production technology, resulting in the pumping of oil from shale into the market by American producers, seems likely to continue to drag oil prices down. Even more ominous for the future of oil, the technology and development of renewable energy sources (especially energy from solar and wind sources) are growing very fast in the world. Renewable energy is growing significantly in some countries (like United Kingdom, Australia and the United States) and constitutes a big part of the future energy plans of some developing countries like India and China. Oil is expected to recede steadily in world energy supplies.

    But even if oil prices do manage to begin to rise again in the world, Nigeria would still have its own unique problems to struggle with in the oil market. The United States, the largest buyer of Nigeria’s oil, has recently cut off all purchases of Nigeria’s crude oil. When that happened, it was hoped that purchases by China and India would rise to take the place of the lost American market; but that is not happening. Earlier this week, Nigeria had to announce special price reductions of its own in order to attract buyers. The days of the popularity of Nigeria’s crude oil in the world market seem to be over.

    With these developments in the oil market, Nigeria has entered upon an era of serious economic uncertainties. But, sadly, this is a down-turn that Nigeria is grossly unprepared for. We have centralized our resources in the hands of the Federal Government, and thereby seriously depressed local enterprise and taught our people to wait for doles from the Federal Government. We have turned our most dynamic citizens into beggars at the door-steps of politicians. Our politicians, leaders and rulers are addicted to operating in the oil euphoria mode. For them, politics is a profession that yields huge fortunes to the politician – especially to those who win elections to public offices.

    In our recent elections, candidates still poured enormous amounts of money into electioneering, in the assurance that these were investments that would yield great fortunes. A friend of mine asked a couple of newly elected National Assembly legislators how they would react if President Buhari brought proposals to the National Assembly for a general reduction in the salaries and allowances paid to political public officials – and their prompt answer was, “We will impeach him”. In our states, governors are addicted to budgeting and mostly stealing large “security votes”, becoming rich from graft, and buying private jets. Political elites that somehow slip into such a disastrous mode never choose to change – it is too sweet to give up.

    But that does not mean that change is impossible. One thing is certain immediately – Nigeria must give up this awful culture of Federal Government control of resources, dependence on governments, treating politics as business, and general dependence on politicians for handouts and favours; and we must return to normal life in which everybody’s ambition, hard work and profit build and uplift society.

    That is where President Buhari comes in. He promised change, and most of us trusted him and voted for change. In view of the drastic conditions that confront him at this beginning, we don’t expect miracles in his “First 100 Days”. But we expect to have soon a solid and clear agenda for the changes that our country desperately needs. Oil may never be able to come back strongly as revenue earner. But our country is rich in various other resources, and change must include releasing them to the enterprising hands of Nigerians. Change must include turning our youths into skilled, efficient and dependable modern workers, and opening a wide door to the entrepreneurial ones among us. And change must reduce the emoluments of politics, until political involvement becomes sacrificial service to our country and people. Buhari can lead us to achieve all these.

     

  • Ekweremadu’s opportunism…

    Our nation is at the mercy of foxy politicians and their godfathers who daily assault our sensibilities because we are bereft of elder-statesmen who have the moral voice to call a spade by its proper name.  Yakubu Gowon who could  have spoken forcefully against what is going on in our society, if only for the sake of our children, is engrossed in endless prayers while those reap where they did not sow contrary to  God’s  injunction,  celebrate fraud as accomplishment.

    Bukola Saraki has been going around visiting leaders to justify what his party has appropriately described as a treacherous act. Ekweremadu has retired to the East to celebrate what was described as ‘snatching victory from the jaw of defeat’ after fraudulently accepting an inducement from a Saraki who was willing to sell the victory of his party. David Mark and Atiku Abubakar have been wildly celebrated by their supporters and the media as astute politicians. And for PDP and its freeloaders that did not see stealing government monies as corruption, stealing 60-49 Upper House victory Nigerians freely gave APC is a ‘victory for the independence of the legislature…’

    Ike Ekweremadu belongs to a segment of Igbo elite with a history of betrayal of uninformed members of their Igbo nation who look up to them for direction. His group including Ohaneze mobilized their people to vote against Buhari and against change. He admitted that much while celebrating his pyrrhic victory in Enugu last week. “Igbo have no regret for the way they voted; if they have the opportunity tomorrow, they will do it again”, he boasted. Then turning to APC whose stolen mandate he was celebrating, he said “We are prepared to work with APC and President Buhari; we will help them to ensure that corruption is reduced to the barest minimum and that the security issue is addressed. We will help them to ensure that our economy will rebound; we will also help them to ensure that there is employment for everybody. But so long as they deviate from this noble principles, and decide to chase shadows, I can assure them, they will get what they are looking for”.

    For Senator Obinna Ogba, the re-election of Ekweremadu is “a major victory for the South-east because   ‘there is no way you can share all these positions without taking the Igbo into consideration”. At the end, it is all about sharing. It has nothing to do with Nigerians who have been short-changed after voting for ‘change’ or the Igbo whose name is being used in vain to immorally acquire power.

    To further justify his immoral act, Ekweremadu assaulted the memory of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, a foremost Nigerian nationalist and one of the founding fathers of our nation, by asserting that “in the 1960s when NCNC went to election and lost to NPC, Zik had to negotiate himself back to power and became the President of Nigeria”; and that “In 1979, NPP (Nigeria Peoples Party) that was so dominant in the East lost in the presidential election; Zik and his colleagues also negotiated himself back to power and Edwin Ume-Ezeoke became the Speaker of the House of Representatives”. This is nothing but revisionism and a great disservice to the memory of Zik. From the available literature, we have no evidence that Zik’s NCNC went into alliance with NPC because of what Zik stood to gain personally. If he was driven by personal ambition, a more rational choice of alliance would have been with AG whose leader, Awo had already conceded the office of Prime Minister to Zik. I think history will judge Zik more as a man who sacrificed personal ambition to preserve the unity of Nigeria as well as protect the interest of his Igbo people who like the Jews thrive more in other peoples’ countries.

    Similarly it was apparent Zik was dragged out of retirement in 1979 by a group of self-serving Igbo elite who wanted to ride on his back to achieve their political ambition. There was no evidence he personally benefited from the NPP and NPN 1979 coalition. Zik is also on record as calling on Igbo ministers serving in Balewa’s government to resign following the collapse of the NCNC and NPC coalition in the first republic. He did the same following the collapse of NPP and NPN in the second republic. Zik, like most of his contemporaries might have tried to protect the interest of Igbo nation within the greater Nigeria nation, there was no evidence he tried to exploit the Igbo nation for personal political gain.

    …and Atiku’s Apostasy

    Atiku Abubakar is a unique  Nigerian  who took a shot at the Presidency only three years after retiring from the customs ‘placing third after MKO Abiola and Babagana Kingibe in the Social Democratic Party (SDP) primaries’. In 1999, Obasanjo found him irresistible and made him his running mate.  His ambition to upstage and prevent Obasanjo from his second term forced President Obasanjo who felt betrayed by a trusted ally to swear Atiku would not succeed him. An unforgiving Obasanjo literarily chased him out of PDP.

    He took refuge in Tinubu’s AC where he secured a platform to pursue his ambition after the Supreme Court had overruled his disqualification by INEC on the ground that he ‘had been indicted for financial misconduct by an investigating panel set up at Obasanjo’s behest’. He crawled back to PDP, abandoning Tinubu and his ACN after losing the election. APC provided for him a refuge when he once again fled PDP that had shut him out of the 2015 presidential race. There were rumours he was on his way back to PDP after losing the APC primary to Buhari . On March 17, Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on Political Affairs, Rufai Ahmed Alkali. while receiving members of 120 support groups loyal to Atiku who were defecting to the PDP, said “Atiku is a PDP man to the core but he has gone on vacation and I believe one day he too will come back to the part.”  Atiku later gave details of the President’s Jonathan surprise visit to his house at midnight on Friday, March 13. According to him, President Jonathan who had pleaded with him on three separate occasions to leave the All Progressives Congress (APC) said “I need to go back to PDP because we built the party together and we are its founding fathers and that we needed to go back and rebuild it.”

    Then Atiku refused to attend Buhari’s campaigns claiming he had ‘told General Buhari’s campaign organizers that if they do not invite him to the rallies, he would not attend’. Speaking in an interview with BBC Hausa on Friday, March 20,  he claimed there  are minor irregularities in connection with the system being followed by the campaign team of General Buhari ‘.

    Now after giving open support to Saraki accused of disrespect for President Buhari and of trading off his party’s victory, Atiku issued a statement expressing  his “unalloyed commitment to the Buhari administration’’. According to him, “the recent outcomes of the National Assembly elections, contrary to insinuations are products of interplay of politics, (since) “in politics, it is a mistake to expect fixed outcomes”.

    What is not in doubt in all this is the fact that Atiku loves neither Tinubu nor Buhari or cares a hoot about APC which he is ready to dump if PDP offers him a platform for 2019. Atiku’s only obsession is to become the President of Nigeria. He will betray anyone that stands in between him and his dream.

  • A guide to the new austerity

    A guide to the new austerity

    WHAT does an empty treasury look like?

    Ask President Muhammadu Buhari. He has just seen one. “The treasury is virtually empty,” he told reporters on Monday, adding that it is a shame that Nigeria can’t pay its workers.

    Well said. The situation has been this horrendous since the dying days of the Dr Goodluck Jonathan administration when oil prices kept tumbling and the desperation to remain in power drove Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders and their collaborators to launch a terrific assault on the treasury, hitting it so hard, like a heavyweight pro boxer tearing away in a street brawl. Reckless.

    Everywhere you turn, there are talks of debts, huge debts that will take generations to repay. Millionaires are facing extinction. The figures come in billions nowadays. Delta State is said to be owing N146.62b. Lagos is owing over N400b, Cross River (N28.29b), Bauchi, where Governor Mohammed Abubakar says he has recovered 25 cars from former Governor Isa Yuguda’s wives, has a debt of N17.51b  and Enugu’s is said to be N13.79b. The other states’ debts come in various sizes.

    How we got into this financial quagmire is a bit clear – massive looting of the treasury amid crashing oil prices, subsidy scam, oil swap fraud, poor budgetary calculations and sheer profligacy, among others. What isn’t clear is how we can get out of the mess threatening to mess up our lives?

    As usual, the situation has spawned a bewildering army of charlatans and crooks posing as finance experts and turnaround surgeons. In other words, out of this crippling cash crisis has sprung a huge business for pranksters, fraudsters and tricksters. Scammers.

    I ran into one the other day in Oyingbo, Lagos Mainland. A huge signboard proclaimed his presence. “A.J. Konigba, London-trained economist and receiver-manager. Liquidation and acquisition. Clearing and forwarding. Come one come all.”

    What was meant to be a short comment of an expert turned into a treatise on leadership in times of financial paralysis as we now have. “How do we get out of this crushing cash crunch?”  Our man chuckled excitedly, shook his head and adjusted his jacket, which seems not to have seen a drycleaner for ages. He cleared his throat in a manner that sent his reading table shaking. “President Buhari will have to lead by example by bringing down the cost of running the Villa,” he  said, his voice booming in the badly-lit room.

    “You see, young man, it is very easy. No more sumptuous state banquets where the menu is a great tribute to the home dishes of the guests, especially diplomats. If there must be one, the menu must be reviewed. No more Chinese dish; Teriyaki beef, stir fried Teriyaki chicken, chicken fingers, crab rangoons, chicken velvet, Wonton soup, cashew chicken, General T’so chicken, Moon Goo Gai Pan and all such stuff, including expensive shrimps – are shrimps not found here?

    “Diplomats should be made to have a taste of our rich culinary culture. We can now have fura dunono instead of Quaker oats and tuwo shinkafa/tuwo masara instead of crispy Chinese rice. In place of canned milk, we can have kunun aya.”

    As for drinks, it is all well that neither Buhari nor Vice President Yemi Osinbajo drinks. They are teetotallers. So, farewell to the days of Champagne and sparkling wines. Cristal. Bollinger. Armand de Brignac. Dom Perignon. These are some of the best money can buy, fit only for the sophisticated palates of our past leaders.

    Unfortunately, local drinks are becoming unfriendly. No fewer than 70 people – still counting – have just died in Rivers State, of drinking ogogoro, the gin called kain kain or akpeteshi, push-me-I-push-you or Sapele water.

    But then, there seems to be a bright side to the strange deaths. Sweet, said the bard, are the uses of adversity. Our scientists are rushing back to the lab, poring over materials in a remarkable cerebral exertion to find out why an age-old reliable merriment companion has suddenly turned an agent of death, killing scores. Now, we often hear of methanol, ethanol, methanal and all such exotic nomenclature. Suddenly, a drink that used to be the delight of the common man, helping him to extract his herbs, keeping  away the biting riverside cold and simply getting him high has become the subject of discussions in government houses and academic circles.

    A professor of chemistry, I am told, is busy seeking grants for his research into this strange phenomenon. The title of his work, said a source with an insight into what he vows will be a huge scientific breakthrough, is “ Nb504-calysed kinetics of ethanol esterification for reactive distillation process simulation in a local gin: A review.”

    Social scientists are also busy, battling to explain the lethal situation. Why do people hit the bottle so hard, until it becomes a killer? Is ogogoro fighting back after decades of abuse?  Is there some elite conspiracy against this traditional, home-made liquor? Any sense in placing a ban on ogogoro as being suggested in some uninformed circles in the cities? Hasn’t hunger killed more people than this innocent drink? Has anybody contemplated slamming a life ban on hunger? The researchers clearly have their job cut out for them.

    Both the President and the Vice President are of moderate weight. Buhari is slim, rod-straight and tall. I recall the veteran journalist-turned-preacher Gbolabo Ogunsanwo drawing a parallel between Buhari’s waist and beauty queen Agbani Darego’s in one of his articles in The Comet, now rested. The thinking then in 1993 , he said, was that Nigerians might not vote Buhari who could sentence everybody to a diet that would banish obesity – a condition many see as a sign of affluence.

    But, talking seriously, as part of the new belt-tightening measures, many of our public servants will have to reduce their weight – willy-nilly. Consider this hypothesis: Why should the President, slim and trim, have Service Chiefs who are rotund and portly? Obesity should have no place in military and paramilitary agencies.

    A source told me the other day that Buhari would have loved to go after suspected treasury looters, seize them and throw them in detention where they will stay until they surrender their loot, but his associates keep telling him: “Ankali, ankali. You must respect the kanstituchan.”

    I do not know now whether the process of recovering Nigeria’s cash will proceed apace, following the President’s announcement that he had secured the support of the West in the recovery drive. Some people are even said to have turned in some cash. When are we going to know who is holding what and who has returned what?

    It is only fitting and proper that in the spirit of this austere season, the Senate has agreed to rework its N120b budget. That’s the spirit. This will be some image burnishing venture, coming after the upper chamber’s resentful election in which some members sought help from the rejected Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) to undermine the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), placing it  on a perilous path.

    Besides, the National Assembly elections have turned the august body into a subject of beer parlour jokes. A colleague sent this: “A dad was flogging his wayward son who stole his money. He asked him to kneel down and raise his hands.

    “You this bad boy. If you continue like this, you know where you will end up?” Before the dad could finish asking the question, the boy replied: “Yes; I know.” Surprised, the dad asked: “where?” and the boy replied: “National Assembly.”

    In Kaduna, irascible Governor Nasir El-Rufai has cancelled Ramadan gifts, saying “super politicians” were getting the contracts, which became an avenue to steal, even as the masses did not feel the impact of the programme. Besides, he has cut his salary by 50 per cent, asking his appointees to do same.

    An activist-lawyer, who pleaded not to be named because of what he called the security implications of the matter, told me last night of a huge, vociferous movement that is in the works. It will soon, according to the fellow, who I can confirm is not frivolous in any way, spring up in villages, towns and cities to demand a list of all those suspected to have had their fingers in the till. The battle cry will be, he said, “surrender the loot”.

    Will you join?

  • Terrorism: A historical perspective – 3

    It was not until recent times that terrorism became easily identifiable with Islamic religion. This was what influenced the American Political Science Professor, Samuel Huttington to suggest that a clash of civilisations between Christianity and Islam was inevitable. Even though he has not been proved completely right, there is an element of truth in what he has suggested because the worldviews of Islam and the West are different but not necessarily antagonistic.

    The Islamic struggle against the West earnestly began when Al-Qaeda (The Base) founded by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abdullah Azzam and Osama Bin Laden between 1988 and 1989 championed a struggle against the West. Their ideology was heavily influenced by the Islamic brotherhood that was unhappy about American influence in the Middle-East and was violently opposed to American military presence in Saudi Arabia, the Holy land of Islam. This movement was also opposed to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

    Initially, some of them were aided by Americans in their fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. But when American forces displaced the Taliban and occupied Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda turned against the United States. They had for some time been involved in targeting American economic interests in the Middle-East until the dramatic event of September 11, 2001 when a young team of 19 Arabs, mostly Saudis hijacked three planes and flew into the World Trade Centre, bringing it down with thousands of people dead while at the same time, hitting the Pentagon in Washington DC and another trying to hit the White House but after struggling with passengers crashed into the fields in Pennsylvania.

    Since the American-British wars of the 1776 to 1783, there had been no enemy attack on the United States mainland until this time. Targeting, the Trade Centre in the New York, the heart of capitalism and the Pentagon, the symbol of American military power all at the same time showed the seriousness of the attack. The world has not been the same since that time. America unfairly accused Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq for state terrorism and stock-piling of weapons of mass destruction for which reasons America invaded the country and later occupied it and went further to occupy Afghanistan.

    From that time up till now and in-spite of recent American military withdrawal from both countries, the struggle between the West and Islam has been accentuated. The most dangerous aspect of this war is the possibility of terrorists taking over Pakistan and proclaiming possession of Islamic nuclear bomb since Pakistan is a nuclear weapons state. The Middle-East has become so complicated because of the struggle of the Palestinians particularly HAMAS which the West has labelled a terrorist group occupying the West Bank of the river Jordan and involved in fighting several wars with Israel.

    HAMAS is seen by most Arabs and Iran as a Palestinian nationalist movement while Israel is perceived as a terrorist state in the Arab and Islamic world. Until recently the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) was also seen as a terrorist organisation. Resistance against Israel and the West has fuelled the rise of several terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) which thrived in Yemen for many years attacking American economic interest and shipping. It was particularly dangerous under Anwar-al-Aulaqi, an American born Yemeni.

    A particularly large and dangerous group regarded as terrorist by the Americans is Hezbollah (party of god) in Lebanon. It is a Shia Islamic militant group and political party under Hassan Nasrallah. This group has been involved in destabilizing Lebanon and fighting against the Sunni and Christian elements in that country as well as confronting Israel in large scale military engagement. The climax of this complexity is the emergence of IS- Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant bringing in as a nucleus of an Islamic caliphate, some territories in Iraq and Syria under a murderous regime headed by one Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

    There is no doubt about the terrorist credentials of this regime because it has beheaded hundreds of people, burned people alive, killed Christians and non-Sunni Muslims, raped women as a strategy of war to the extent that the whole world including the Muslim community is coming together to get rid of this cancer from the global community. Variants of this extremism exists in Africa in form of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, FIS (Front Islamique du Salut) in Algeria and in Libya the so-called Islamic caliphate has raised its flags after the disintegration of the country due to the NATO support of insurgents to overthrow the Muhammad Ghadafi regime.

    The disintegration of Somalia has also witnessed the emergence of the Al-Shabaab that has been a scourge to countries in the horn of Africa as well as the East African states of Kenya and Tanzania. And recently in the last five years, north-eastern parts of Nigeria have suffered from the same Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist under the name of Boko Haram- Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati wal-Jihad founded by Ustaz Mohammed Yussuf. This group has recently placed itself under the guardianship of Al-Baghdadi’s IS (Islamic State).

    Let me dwell briefly on Boko Haram insurgency. Is Boko Haram an Islamic insurgency? The answer to this question depends on the aspect of Boko Haram one is dealing with. It seems that there are three types of movement coalescing into what is now called Boko Haram. One is a religious movement, another is a political movement and the third is a criminal component and it seems each is feeding on the other. Unfortunately, there is now evidence that some army personnel who are not loyal to Nigeria are beginning to surface in the ranks of Boko Haram.