The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Professor Ade-Ajayi at 85

    Professor Ade-Ajayi turned 85 last week. A book with the title of J.F Ade-Ajayi, His Life and Works was presented last week with pomp and pageantry at the new University of Ibadan Conference Centre to celebrate an iconic figure in the history of African academia. Professor Ajayi was born in Ikole, Ekiti State to a doting father and an enterprising mother. His father was a local post man and a counsellor in the palace of the Elekole. Even with his limited exposure to western education, his father knew that the key to a bright future for his young son was education. He therefore billeted the young Jacob in the house of a local teacher so that he could have a head-start among his colleagues. Later, he was sent to Ado-Ekiti where he also lived with a teacher and friend of his father while he was going to the Ekiti Central School that later metamorphosed into the famous Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti. It was from Ado-Ekiti that at the age of 11 in 1940, Ajayi left for Lagos, the frontier of opportunity at that time and enrolled in Igbobi College for his secondary education. Igbobi College brought the young man into contact with other Nigerians. While in school, he never took the second position he also never played any games and rose to become as was expected school library prefect and from that time onwards, he and the world of books could not be separated. He was not only a bibliophile and a bookworm, he was also determined to go as far as his brain would take him. On leaving Igbobi College, he was too young to go to Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, the only university in West Africa affiliated with Durham University in England. He also did not have rich parents who could have sent him abroad. He contented himself with taking examination to the Yaba Higher College to read English, Latin and History. The establishment of the Yaba Higher College was something of a sop to nationalists who were agitating for a tertiary institution in Nigeria. They did not get what they wanted; rather, what they got was some kind of what today will be called a polytechnic where people in the fields of Medicine, Engineering, Pharmacy, Surveying and General Education were taught. As providence will have it, University of Ibadan opened its gate in 1948 and Ade-Ajayi crossed over and was one of its first students. Three years later, he graduated with a general degree in English, Latin and History. He later went to Leicester University where he took a first class honours degree in History and he later went to the University of London for a PhD in History. He returned to Nigeria in 1958 and his rise to a chair of History was meteoric. Within five years of returning home, he had not only become a professor but one whose views were very much sought after at home but particularly abroad. With Professor Onwuka Dike, he blazed the trail of the study of African History and African Historiography generally. Before this time, Euro-American historians dismissed the idea of African history and asserted that Africa had no history and that if it had any, it must be the activities of the Europeans in Africa. One even famously said, Africa was a dark continent and darkness was not a subject of history. Ajayi and others both in Africa and some in Europe and America embarked on the diligent search and study of the African past. The absence of written documentation, they asserted did not mean the absence of history and that in any case, it is not the entire African continent that lacked written civilisation as can be evidenced by written materials on North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Sudan belt of Africa, the eastern coast of Africa and the southern part of Africa where European and Arab accounts of the places provided substantial material for the study of the African past. Even where there were no documents, Ajayi and others led the world in the understanding of the usefulness of remembered accounts as contained in oriki, cognomen, oral poetry, kinglist, festival re-enactments of the past etc. Memorised history by griots and other professional historians in the courts of rulers who must remember their histories or lose their lives also provide materials for understanding the African past. Ajayi and others were able to unearth these golden materials for the purpose of elucidating the past of Africa and even foreshadowing the future. He and others taught Africa and the world, the fact that availability of written documents should not be equated with objectivity in history and that African history and other histories of other parts of the world should be studied from a multi-disciplinary approach from which even the sciences of archaeology, anthropology, botany, zoology, linguistics and the use of radio carbon-dating could be enlisted in unravelling the past of Africa.

    After Dike became the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan and after he left in 1966 because of engulfing political problems in Nigeria, Ajayi became the torch-bearer of what later evolved into the Ibadan School of History. This school succeeded in establishing the fact and reality of African history and that it was a serious academic discipline worthy of pursuit. The impact of this school was in helping Africans and their leaders have confidence in themselves in the face of European denigration and psychological undermining. This led to the description of the Ibadan School as “a nationalist school of history” designed to challenge western orthodoxy that tended to see non-Europeans as inferior who had no history at all and that if they had any history at all, such history was not important. Ajayi’s place in the academic firmament is secure. He was sought after and given generous grants to teach in American universities such as Stanford, Wisconsin, and North Western to mention a few as well as in British universities such as Birmingham, the School of African and Oriental studies of the University of London and even in Moscow. His reputation was so formidable that the Rockefeller Foundation generously endowed the University of Ibadan as Centre for African Studies. Ajayi’s scholarship carried him to the membership of the board of governors of the United Nations’ university in Tokyo of which he later became chairman. Ajayi does not just believe in the esoteric nature of scholarship, he applied his scholarship to give historical backing to the idea of the Lagos Plan of Action in 1970 arguing that African frontiers and boundaries were new phenomena associated with the ephemeral colonial phase of African development and that in the African past, African territories were open with no frontiers and that they meshed imperceptibly into one another. He was also one of those who set up the Association of African Universities (AAU) and he was active in the Association of Commonwealth Universities while he was Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos.

    Apart from helping to build the faculty of arts at the University of Ibadan and to help develop graduate studies in Ibadan, Ajayi was the one who built the University of Lagos from the ashes of ethnic rivalry to the pinnacle of a first class African university. When he got to the University of Lagos, it is fair to say, the university had little academic reputation but by time he left, the university was firmly set on what it has become today. Most of the physical landmarks existing in the University of Lagos today were built by Ajayi when he was Vice Chancellor.

    Ajayi’s life has touched the lives of several people in Nigeria and in the outside world. A grateful nation has honoured him with the Officer of the Federal Republic (OFR) and he is also a winner of the academic laurel of the national merit (NNOM). Ajayi is an author of several books and has written widely on several topics, he has mentored several students and he is a professor of professors because many of his former students have occupied and are occupying important academic positions in Nigeria and outside Nigeria today. Apart from being a seasoned academic, Ajayi is a thoroughly civilised man and a gentleman. When he has occasion to disagree with somebody, he does it effortlessly and without offense and with empathy for the other party. He is a quiet worker not given to the loud noise of many of his compatriots and in his evening years, he has devoted himself to the study of the Bible and the word of God. In all his endeavours, he is complimented by a virtuous and lively wife, Christine Ajayi who had made the home environment so convivial for the flowering of the academic tree into which the academic mustard seed had grown. Ajayi’s life is also enriched by his four daughters and a son who are well grounded in their various academic and professional callings.

  • Ministers and advisers in time of crisis

    The challenges of President Jonathan as a leader of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society like Nigeria are enormous.  Overwhelmed by myriad of problems bedevilling the nation, he was forced to remind his tormentors how a lot easier it is to criticize than govern. I am sure Jonathan couldn’t have fought so hard for the presidency if he didn’t mean well for the country. I am sure many Nigerians shared his passion for the country as he bellowed during his inauguration “Today, our unity is firm, and our purpose is strong, our determination unshakable. Together, we will unite our nation and improve the living standards of all our peoples whether in the North or in the South; in the East or in the West. Our decade of development has begun”.

    The fate of Jonathan is not different from those of his predecessors in office who had assumed power promising to change our country for the better but ended up leaving behind more problems than they inherited. Their failures have not been due to absence of passion or lack of trying, but in their character flaws effectively exploited by self-serving ministers and advisers. From Balewa to Obasanjo, all our past Nigerian leaders have been humbled by these men who operate without scruples.

    Although  we have rightly placed the blame for our failures  on the door steps of our successive leaders because the buck stops on their desk,  this has only emboldened  many of our permanent men in government  to move  unscathed from the ruins of one administration to  emerge as key players  in the new one. In the first republic it was ministers and advisers that sold to Balewa government that stable and peace post-independent Nigeria could only be attained by cutting the wings of high flying Action Group, creating Mid West out of Western Region to spite the advocates of regions for restive ethnic nationalities. They emerged from the ashes of the collapsed first republic as key players in Ironsi regime. It was the same set of advisers who convinced ill-equipped Ironsi that the trouble with our nation was the regional framework of our federal structure and that what was required to remove the stranglehold of one region on the rest of the nation was the imposition of a unitary system on a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. Ironsi’s self-serving advisers who plunged the nation into civil war outlived him to play prominent role as NPN members in the short-lived second republic.

    Operating without principles outside the desire to serve self, they supported the reckless consumption of Shagari government which in three years erased the foreign reserve left behind by Obasanjo in 1979. They embarked on the battle over the control of the minds of the people through heavy propaganda on government-controlled NTA and the Daily Times to denounce those who had warned of the imminent collapse of the economy. They went ahead to supervise the rigging of the 1983 elections remorselessly and gleefully awarding ‘landslide and sea-slide’ victories on the NTA to NPN. In the end, they laid waste the Shagari administration and buried the second republic.

    For eight years General Babangida took the nation for a ride.  His ministers and advisers told Nigerians there was no alternative to Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP); that political parties can be decreed and that democracy can be taught in classrooms. Babangida’s economic and political advisers who destroyed our economy and took us through eight years of fraudulent transition emerged as key players in the aborted third republic while others that fervently worked and schemed for him to remain in power later became foreign ministers and ambassadors under Abacha. Those ministers and advisers behind “Abacha today, Abacha tomorrow and Abacha forever” band became prominent actors in the politics of the forth republic. And of course Obasanjo’s recent admonition to President Jonathan to be wary of advisers was an indirect admission that his larger-than-life image was destroyed by advisers and ministers who fraudulently organized loans for him to buy Transcorp shares, secretly financed the collapsed third term agenda claiming without Obasanjo there will be no Nigeria only to turn up as Yar’Adua and Jonathan ministers, advisers and board chairmen.

    In the last three and half years, Jonathan who came after a landslide victory, has been a captive of his  self-serving ministers and advisers made up of  repentant militants, elder statesmen as militants who once advised General Gowon against handing over power,  and others  imposed on him by PDP wheelers and dealers. Events and activities of these men in the run up to and after the abduction of our Chibok girls have clearly shown that they, like their predecessors, are neither loyal to Jonathan nor to Nigeria.  For weeks they unleashed their caustic tongues on critics who tried to link the relative ease with which insurgents overran military barracks, police stations and maximum security detention facilities to underhand practices by those in charge of procurement of needed weapons for our armed forces.

    Now  the US and Britain after tongue-lashing the president  for presiding over a corrupt administration have  brought  in their  sophisticated planes, drones and other war-heads to aid intelligence-gathering for our ill-equipped soldiers blindly fighting insurgents without borders.  Ministers and advisers who have for months insisted our soldiers were well kitted have not told us why  a nation that spent 130 billion in four months on war against insurgents could not afford at least two  drones at a total cost of about a million dollars  from South Africa’s defence industry .

    If the president needed the help of international community to come to terms with corruption in his government, the only evidence needed to validate the thesis of his political adversaries who had accused him of running kindergarten government were the recent embarrassing and disastrous outings  of some of his ministers.

    If the tenure of the immediate past Minister of Police Affairs who spent most of the time politicking  instead of equipping police stations routinely sacked by Boko Haram insurgents was a disaster, the response  of  the  current one to the abduction of the Chibok girls was tragic. Asked by reporters about government’s plan to rescue the abducted girls when sighted at a birthday bash for the Olubadan of Ibadan a day after the kidnapping, the minister drew blank, first doubting the event took place before appealing to the insurgents to release the girls because such act was unislamic.

    Last week’s confrontation between Olajumoke Akinjide’s and the weeping ‘Bring back our girls’ group led by Obiageli Ezekwesili, a smart, sharp, razor-tongued intellectual who will give Hillary Clinton a run for her money in a debate contest, and who like Obasanjo fights like a bull holding no hostages, was a total disaster for government which many believe indulges more in politicking than governance. First, Akinjide, whose father recently rated President Jonathan as one of the best Nigerian presidents, was ill-suited to confront impassioned protesters against Jonathan’s inept handling of the abduction of the Chibok girls.  Then the minister falsely claimed government acted from day one of the abduction when it was in fact government’s indifference and politics of buck-passing that sparked off demonstrations by Nigerian women and the international community to wake President Jonathan from his deep slumber.  And finally, as if to confirm people’s fears that the president and his ministers do not give a damn about governance,  Akinjide  asked those who traded their freedom and liberty for government protection  to direct the ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ plea at those who abducted their daughters. It cannot be any more tragic. As it is in Police Affairs Ministry and Ministry of Abuja Territory, so it is in Defence, Aviation, and Petroleum and Education ministries. All we see is politicking by self-serving ministers.

  • Voices from beyond

    THIS WEEK is the kind that we have never seen as a nation because of its peculiarity. No doubt, we have always celebrated Children’s  Day, which came up two days ago, and Democracy Day, which is today, during the same week, but the two events never came up at a time like this when we are grieving over the abducted Chibok schoolgirls. In a way, the shine has been taken out of these celebrations by their abduction.

    All over the world, the girls’ abduction has become an issue. World powers have joined in the search for them. The United States (US) has since moved men and materials to nearby Chad to facilitate their movement into Nigeria if need be. There is nothing to celebrate about the Children’s  and Democracy Days because of these girls. In fact, there is nothing to celebrate about Nigeria as long as these children are in captivity.

    What an irony. The Children’s  Day celebration came up when these girls, who are also children, are still in captivity.  It would have been a worthy Children’s  Day to kids worldwide if , as a nation, we  have been able to rescue these girls  from their abductors. These girls have been in their abductors’ den since April 14. Between then and now, there was ample time to rescue them   if we had been up and doing.

    We left things to chance for too  long. Having said that, I still believe that all hope is not lost. We brought this shame of external help on ourselves by not acting early enough, as expected of a caring government,  to stop the abduction of these girls.     Are we saying that we cannot stop Boko Haram without the help of the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and France? So, if these countries succeed in helping us to get back  these girls, does it mean that we will again run to them in future if we find ourselves in a  similar situation? There are certain things worse than shame and this is surely  one of them.

    There is no better way for these girls to have celebrated the Children’s  Day than to have been at home with their parents and friends. And there would have been no better way for them to celebrate today’s Democracy Day too than to be in the midst of  loved ones. Unfortunately, they are in the hands of infidels, people who do not mean well and who may not bat an eyelid before doing them harm. Our prayer is that  no matter how long they  spend in captivity, they will come to no harm.

    More than ever, this should be a time for sober reflection for us as a nation. Where did we get it wrong? How did we get to this pass? When did rain start beating us? This is time for introspection. We need to look back in order to determine how we can move forward as a nation. And  the government has to take the lead in this. What the government should understand is that it is being criticised  because much is expected from it. As a government, it should be able to win the people’s confidence in its ability to defend them.

    Sadly, the stark  reality  is that many, if not all Nigerians,  do not  have  faith in our government to save us in times of trouble.  Other countries will go to any length to save their citizens in times of crisis or come for them  anywhere they may be trapped in any part of the world, but we cannot expect that of our own government, which appears not to value human  lives. What is bad in the government admitting that it made a mistake in not swiftly responding to the girls’ abduction and  promising  that such would not happen again?

    Instead of doing that, the government and its agents are busy exchanging words with  perceived opponents. The government should realise that to whom much is given, much is expected.  Whether it likes it or not, it is its lot to fish out these girls wherever they may have been taken to by Boko Haram. That is why it is the  government and that is why it is in power. The little we can do as a people is to assist  in whatever way we can to get these girls back.

    We note the efforts so far made, but more needs to be done. During Tuesday’s Children’s  Day’s celebration nationwide, , the plaintive  cry was bring back our girls. This  cry is not going to stop until the girls are found, no matter how uncomfortable the government may be with it. This is where President Goodluck Jonathan comes in. Since the buck stops on his table, he should directly  monitor everything concerning these girls’ rescue. By so doing, the president will know what is happening first hand and not rely on second hand information.

    The danger in relying on such information is that he will not be told the truth, but only juicy stories that everything is in order  when they are not. Last week, he missed another opportunity in letting Nigerians know his feelings on the issue when he did not see the protesting  Citizens Group, which was stopped by the police from reaching the Villa. He sent representatives led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Anyim Pius Anyim, to receive the group.

    If he had come out to talk that day it would have gone a long way to assure the nation that yes, our president is not sleeping over the matter. What would he have lost in receiving those people? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Rather, he would have gained a lot. As their father, the girls have sent a save our soul (SOS) to the president from the lair of Boko Haram.  In a soulstirring message, they asked the president to save their lives through a prisoner swap.

    The president is said to have rejected the prisoner swap deal with the sect and settled for a ceasefire. He may have good reasons for doing so. But then, he is not wearing the shoe just as these girls and their parents are.  So, if the girls  want to be swapped, the president should oblige them  and save them from  this ordeal.  It is not a sign of weakness to accept the prisoner swap deal, it is to save the lives of these precious kids. What will it profit the government  if they are wasted just because of  its  refusal  to  swap them. Talking about Democracy Day, what is there to celebrate about 15 years of democracy  when part of our future is in captivity? It is in the national interest to chuck the celebration until the girls are freed.

  • The terror this time (2)

    I will not dare to think that this grave we dig today shall bloom tomorrow. But it could. Nigeria could become that mass grave we dream to bury the shoots of nationhood and bliss nurtured by men we may never measure up to. But this is hardly about the founding fathers in whose hands Nigeria pirouetted and prospered.

    This is about you and me. This is about the Boko Haram terrorist group and the violence and death it perpetrates. This is about our clueless and selfish leadership. This is about predatory forces from abroad running amok and unchecked all over our sovereignty. This is about perverted international news agencies sowing seeds of chaos and interminable bloodbath in our doubtful minds. This is about devious news anchors attacking our minds with coordinated lies and deadly propagandas.

    And this is about our knack for playing stupid, predictably and self consciously. This is about our knack for turning logic on its head to complement our innate greed and perversions. Nigeria dies on our watch, today. This minute, every civil dream and seed of State evaporates, because we have submitted our will to humour our wiles and the machinations of friendly predators from abroad.

    We think Nigeria is a mistake. But Nigeria was never a mistake. It is never the mistake. You and I are the mistake. You and I are the emblems of hope serving as crops of wrath where covetousness and deceit whets inhuman appetites. As you read, the myth of war and secession holds fast. Despite the bitterness that trails the Nigerian civil war, characters that ought to know better acidly pronounce the necessity of war and violent secession like the next best thing that could ever happen to you and me.

    This myth holds particularly among the youths because it is all they could manage today. War and separation remains appealing to the Nigerian youth not just because politicians, activists and journalists of vulpine intent and intellect claim it’s our next best alternative, our youth lust for war and secession because the idea offers fleeting moments of sentimentality that reinforces their dreams of acceptance and self-worth. Even those who know it to be a farce are loath to jettison that infectious romanticism that gets them giddy as overfed cattle gorging on barn supplies.

    The youth are told that the only times in their lives that they would be worth something and enjoy a hopeful reality is when they agree to serve as cannon fodder for the total balkanization of the Nigerian State. They do not know the import of the politics they perpetuate. It’s not about defending the interests of a minority tribe nor is it about paving the way for a more responsible and humane government. It’s about working for some devious activist, politician, diplomat and public officer who works for some rich and privileged cabal with all manners of interests across international boundaries.

    Today, we perpetuate the politics of the hashtag. So what if Michelle Obama, Cameron, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and so on pose with the hashtag: “Bringbackourgirls” before the camera; how does their show of solidarity resolve the several ills afflicting us?

    No foreign financial or military aid will resolve our problems. No degree of idiotic mumbo-jumbo by American clowns like McCain, Amanpour and company will rectify the many ills afflicting us. Hence we can give the McCains of the world as many thumbs up as we like, claiming they are only sounding the knell of truth; truth is, we would only be affirming that indeed, Nigerians are just another pitiful specie of “black monkeys…lower mutants on the totem pole of black skinned brutes,” “clueless niggers,” “nitwits” and so on as many Caucasian racists had severally described us in the past.

    I agree that the nation needs to sit down to deliberate over the most dependable and progressive path forward. However, it would be the greatest fraud and disservice to you, me and posterity if we claim that splitting Nigeria according to America’s ultimate game plan remains the most practicable solution to our grief.

    It is alright for a people to determine what course of action would best serve their interests but it would be suicidal for us all to believe that our travails shall end in a new Biafra, Federal Republic of Oodua or United States of Arewa. In every new, independent nation we build, there shall be no secure civilization or the usual securities by which a nation thrives. That is because whatever new States we create shall comprise of ignorant, turbulent proletariat stymied by crushing poverty and interminable penchant to play dumb. Such manner of working class or grassroots would as usual be dominated by the same ruling class whose insensitivity and wile are responsible for our travails today. And of course, the so-called “super-powers” that incite our breakup today in the interest of the commoners, will queue solidly behind all manners of tyrants they succeed in installing in our fragmented States.

    As it is now in contemporary Nigeria, every new leadership we have in every new nation we create shall effortlessly dominate us and impose upon us their children, relatives and political associates while they make labourers and thugs of the youth by whose blood, bestiality and sweat whatever the new nation was achieved.

    The choice is ours to make; we either choose to remain a bunch of fools and clueless agitators or we could choose to leave the current leadership to the madness it perpetuates while we chart fresh paths to the future of our dreams.

    Some of our greatest problems in this country, besides corruption, are racism and greed. However, the Nigerian youth need not be handicapped by these but we seem not to know that. It is time to heal. It is time for the Nigerian youth to take their rightful place in the scheme of things. I will never tire from saying that it’s about time we sought and identified our own candidate – the untiringly just and humane candidate. And let it be known that we shall never find such candidate amidst the coven of predators to whom we have learnt to serve as prey.

    In order to heal, the Nigerian youth need to create and unite under a socio-political platform immune to and jealously guarded against the madness of materialism, racism and intractable wile.

    We need to identify the demons that drive the ruling class and dispossess our minds of every vanity that makes us habitable to similar fiends. The tragedy of our generation subsists in our seemingly uncontainable prospects and our desperation to be lorded over and contained, at a price. We are more endowed in intellect and humanity than the current ruling class. Thus let us not continue to serve as disposable pawns in its politics of bitterness and plunder.

    If this unusual and unpredictable development is to flourish amid peace and order, reciprocal respect and budding intelligence, it will call for that truest and most dependable social surgery I advocate: revolution by the ballot system not through the gun barrel or coordinated chaos fed to us piecemeal and in vicious mouthfuls by the foreign media and predatory nations’ “intelligence” and “security” agencies.

     

    • To be continued…

  • Borno political elite’s war of attrition

    As it is often said, evil triumphs when good men keep quiet. The current crisis in Borno State festered because men of goodwill from that part f the country kept quiet as the current state actors engaged themselves in a war of attrition, not because they care for the governed but out of shared greed to hold on to power. As the world today embarks on efforts to rescue the abducted children of Chibok Government Secondary School, Governor Kashim Shettima who is one of those responsible for the 15 years baleful legacies of ANPP in Borno State has finally admitted that “the security challenges confronting the state and the nation as a whole can be traced to poverty, unemployment and lack of education among the youth population, which create tension and idleness among the youth making them susceptible to deviant behaviours.”

    But as President Jonathan, one of the external forces fishing in the troubled waters of Borno State has rightly reminded him, it was not the federal government but the local politicians that are responsible for a situation where only 27% of children of school age attend school, a situation that makes them easy targets for recruitment by confused people who preach hate ideology and religious intolerance, killing helpless women and children and kidnapping teenage girls as sex slaves in the name of their strange god.

    The major motivation for the 14 years war of attrition by the Maiduguri warriors is power. Their common ideology is greed. They are comfortable operating freely whether under the banners of APP, ANPP, AD or PDP and APC. They are all friends, business partners and quite often, children of those who have cornered disproportionate share of the state resources. First, was Mala Kachalla, financed by wealthy Ali Modu Sherif, to become an elected governor of Borno State in April 1999, on the platform of  All People’s Party (APP) . Not long after, the party became ‘All Nigeria People’s Party’ (ANPP) as a result of fractionalization.  To survive the dangerous mine field of Maiduguri politics, Kachalla  in February 2001 established a Sharia Implementation Committee, in a state with  about 60% Muslims and 40% Christians. And because there was no ‘clear cut demarcation between Borno, Chad,  Niger and northern Cameroon, a region plagued by armed rebels and trafficking in illicit arms and children’ as Kachalla himself once observed, his ‘political sharia’ was hijacked  When his financier and godfather, Ali Modu Sheriff in 2006, decided to become a king himself, Kachalla sought refuge in the  Alliance for Democracy (AD). Following his defeat by his godfather, he joined forces with PDP to wage war and make Borno State ungovernable. He died in the process in April 2007.

    Ali Modu Sheriff himself like ‘the godfather who never sleeps’ schooled, lived and joined  his business tycoon father’s construction company as a director  in Maiduguri.  His PDP rival Hashim Ibrahim who  holds the traditional title of Mutawalli Borno, a senior councillor to the Shehu (traditional ruler) of Borno, whom he defeated in 2003 and 2007  was his childhood friend, business partner and  like  him was a privileged son of an illustrious father, Ibrahim Imam, ‘the motivating force of the progressive Borno Youth Movement.

    Senator Khalifa Ahmed Zannah, another major actor in the Maiduguri elite war of attrition is also a Maiduguri-based successful businessman, and a member of the board of many federal establishments. General Ibrahim Babangida was his godfather. He,  along with others in 2007 organised the Democratic Women Forum, an organization that supported the political aspirations of the former military dictator.  Contesting as a PDP candidate in the 2011 Borno Central Senatorial election, he defeated Ali Modu Sheriff, the two term governor of Borno State by 189,232 to Sheriff’s 120,377 votes. Now, Senator Zannah, whose nephew  Shuaibu Bama was arrested in Modu Sherif’s house and accused of having links with Boko Haram has in turn accused Modu of being the sponsor of Boko Haram. The arrest of his brother according to him was “part of the campaign to declare him a Boko Haram member, financier, sympathiser, and harbourer and declare his seat vacant, all to pave way for Ali Modu Sheriff”.

    Shettima the current governor who is a prominent member of the on-going war of attrition was also based in Maiduguri before he became Modu Sheriff’s Commissioner for Finance and Economic Development, later commissioner in the ministries of local governments and chieftaincy affairs, education, agriculture and  health.  The assassination of Engineer Modu Fannami Gubio, the ANPP governorship candidate, by yet-to-be identified gunmen paved the way for his emergence as ANPP candidate. He  later went ahead to defeat his PDP opponent, Muhammed Goni  in  the April 2011 elections,  with 531,147 votes to  Goni’s 450,140 votes.

    Shettima in his inaugural speech as a governor described Sheriff, his godfather as “indefatigable, visionary and politically sagacious whose immense contribution to the development of our great party and his demonstrated managerial and administrative acumen in governing our dear state in the last eight years remains unassailable”. But the governor was silent on the fact that those eight years witnessed several religious riots in which many churches were destroyed, with massive killings and destruction of property by the Boko Haram fundamentalist Islamist sect.  If the policy direction of Shettima’s administration which he said was predicated on “Restoration of peace and tranquillity in the state” has failed, it was perhaps because it was based on falsehood.

    Shettima and his group who have been in power for about 14 years are all grassroots politicians with cells of support in all the 27 local council areas of the state. They have spent all their lives in Maiduguri and served their communities in various capacities as party officials and commissioners. It is therefore inconceivable that they will not have an idea of those who have laid siege on Borno State in the past few years. APC should be asking the Borno State government hard questions. If Shettima gave an undertaking that the abducted girls would be protected, what measures he put in place to guarantee this or forestall possible sabotage by an unfriendly federal government that has demonstrated its hostility?  I am sure APC is aware that if an Ogbeni Aregbesola gave such an undertaking, he would probably be there physically with his army of happy volunteer’s workers to serve as human shield.

    Although Lagos State is not at war, but Borno State governor could have borrowed one or two things from Governor Fashola’s creative approach to security in Lagos State. He did not just wait on federal government he once alleged sent two patrol vans to a police division where about 50 are needed, but creatively raised funds to equip the force. If the authorities in Borno State had gone beyond politicking and embarked on fund-raising in Abuja, Lagos and other major cities of the nation, ordinary Nigerians incensed by Boko Haram’s sheer madness would have made contributions. Taking out a million naira out of the state meagre resources to pay the family of each dead soldier is not money creatively spent. Such amount could have been more creatively deployed to keep the soldier alive.

    It was recently disclosed that Obasanjo negotiated and obtained from Boko Haram a set of conditionality for a truce which the government ignored opting for outright use of force, while paying lip service to negotiation.  As this column, along with other well-meaning Nigerians, has canvassed in the last three years, self-inflicted crisis by Maiduguri’s self-serving politicians cannot be resolved by force of arms.  The way forward will be to allow the warring elites face their demons no matter how hard to swallow the demands of the insurgents are. We cannot continue to shy away from compromise which is said to be the highest badge of honour in a federal arrangement as in democracy even when other options are readily available.

  • International media and Africa

    From Wednesday May 7, to Friday May 9, Nigeria hosted some kind of the world economic forum, a kind of Africa Davos in Abuja. Unfortunately, at a time Nigeria should be in glorious light, the kidnapping of 274 girls by Boko Haram and the global concern overshadowed the significance and importance of the World Economic Forum in Abuja. We, of course, have ourselves to blame for this tragedy. The Boko Haram phenomenon started almost five years ago from an isolated event in Maiduguri involving the killing of the Boko Haram leader, Mallam Yusuf while in police custody. The movement itself seemed to have been exploited by politicians during the regime of the ANPP government of Bunu Sheriff. It seems as soon as the party was in power, it saw no need for the services of Boko Haram sect and tried to get rid of their troublesome presence by force. Unfortunately, the thing has spiralled out of everybody’s control. There has been series of killings and kidnappings by the Boko Haram group and it seems as if they are getting bolder and bolder every day. The world ignored them until this episode of kidnapping of young school girls. Abubakar Shekau the leader of Boko Haram has now publicly said he will sell them to slavery and this has again been exploited to our discomfiture by the international media.

    The concern of the international community is understandable but unfortunately, this concern is sometimes laced with hypocrisy. How does one explain the use of the kidnapping to ridicule and denigrate our country as a land where there is no effective government or where the military is inept and where according to CNN, there are 700,000 slaves? The international media suddenly came up with a spurious study that there are 30 million slaves in the world and 700,000 of this are in Nigeria. As if this is not enough, the CNN has been describing the practice of early marriage among our Muslim compatriots as forced marriage and equating it with slavery. This kind of cultural arrogance should not be allowed to go unchallenged. There may be cultural practices in Nigeria and in other parts of the world that are not the same with western practices but it will be irresponsible to describe such marriages as forced marriage. Having lived in the United States and in the western world in general, you cannot but feel that some of the slanting of the information in the global media is designed to depress our brothers in the black Diaspora so as to make people feel that the pernicious practice of slavery has always existed in Africa and our brothers in the black Diaspora should be grateful to the white man in spite of the 400 years of slavery and unpaid labour. Anybody who does not believe race is a factor in international relations can now learn from Nigerian experience. Furthermore, it has taken the international community almost a month to react to this tragedy and even their reaction is so patronising and humiliating that we can hardly be expected to celebrate it. Of course if our government has been highly efficient, this may never have happened.

    Perhaps we are wrong to have called the whole world to Abuja and unreasonably closed down the government for three days at a time when all hands should have been on deck to free these unfortunate children. Our government feels what is important is its image and politics and the dramatic crying and wailing of the president’s wife has also not helped because this is not a personal issue of the president as Mr Jonathan but a tragedy for Nigeria. Unless we can dramatically rescue these poor children, the damage to Nigeria’s image may be irredeemable. What worries most Nigerians is that in spite of the declaration of emergency in the north-east, Boko Haram is still able to drive in convoys to inflict havoc on unsuspecting children and individuals. A state of emergency and imposition of curfew seem to be observed in the breach in the north-eastern part of Nigeria. The conclusion any intelligent person will come to is that the security forces are complicit in the dastardly attacks that are going on. Now we have had to descend from our Olympian height of protecting our national sovereignty to the abyss of begging Americans and the Britons to come and help us rescue our own children. One can understand international assistance in situations like air crashes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes but in a man-made situation such as kidnapping, national governments are naturally expected to be able to handle such events. It appears to me that we have failed miserably in this regard. We have allowed politics to come before security and good governance. At one point, we were in self-denial about the crisis facing our country. Now everybody is aware of the ineptness of our government and its inability to protect us. This is sad particularly at a time when we should be basking at being the biggest economy in Africa. We have lost an opportunity to positively project the image of our country. Whatever has to be done to redeem this terrible situation must be done and done quickly we cannot afford to allow the situation to drag on indefinitely. The issue of Boko Haram therefore calls for a frontal attack with a policy of a combination of carrots and cane and a large measure of development assistance to states in the north-east of Nigeria as well as a plan to help alleviate youth unemployment in the region. It is the idle hands that is the devil’s workshop, we have to take the sting out of the pain of joblessness and unemployment among the youth nationally but particularly in the northern part of our country. I am not suggesting government creating sinecure jobs but through encouraging private and public investments and public works particularly investment in agriculture, we can create jobs. The Chad Basin Development Authority was in the past the vanguard of wheat production in Nigeria. We need to revive this and the north-east is also suitable for cattle ranching and for vegetable production particularly tomatoes, onions and so on to which we can add value and export to other parts of the world to create wealth for the local people. There is so much that can be done if we are a serious people and our current security situation compels us to think out of the box and approach our problems rationally. The damage to our image can only be repaired if we are able to put an end to this national tragedy and emerge out of the situation with our heads held high as was the case after the Biafra civil war. A policy of rehabilitation, reconciliation and reconstruction will be most appropriate in the present circumstances.

    • Borno political elite’s war of attrition

  • What can break Nigeria?

    Fears and predictions grow worldwide that Nigeria could soon break up. In the light of that, the National Conference has become phenomenally important – important as a forum where we Nigerians could critically and carefully look around and inside us to see what, in fact, could make our country break up soon, and try very sincerely to fix it.

    One factor that threatens Nigeria is growing poverty among us Nigerians. In terms of natural resources, we are by no means a poor country; in fact, we are one of the very richest countries on earth. Our natural resources are a solid base upon which we could have built one of the world’s richest and most powerful countries. Poverty is not in the making of our country; we are poor today because we have chosen to be poor. The men and women who have managed the affairs of our country since independence have, step by step, succeeded in turning us, the citizens of one of the naturally richest countries in the world, into a huge mass of paupers and beggars – paupers and beggars who must be crooks to survive, paupers and beggars increasingly driven by anger, hate, and an urge to violence.

    We have reached the point at which this situation must change.

    Apart from growing poverty, researchers and writers are talking more and more of what they call Nigeria’s “fault-lines”. By that they mean the differences inherent in the fact that Nigeria is not a nation, but a country of many nations. Yes, we are a country of many nations – each nation with its own history, culture, worldview, desires, expectations, ways of doing things, etc. Making one coherent country out of this intense diversity cannot be easy, even with the best of intentions and commitments. In fact, there is an additional reality that makes the task harder – namely, the fact that the three largest Black nations on earth (Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani and Igbo) are part of the Nigerian plurality. These three nations should never have been brought together into one country. Each of them is too big a fish to be swallowed. The manifest destiny of each of these three giants – in a Black Africa consisting almost entirely of very small nations – is to belong to the forefront of Black Africa’s development in the modern world, and to show Black Africans the path to prosperity. Huddling them together in one country inhibits the development of each of them, and distorts its proper vision of itself and of its duty in modern history. Are there, in the world in our times, many other nations of the size of the Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani or Igbo, each of which is subject to the sovereignty of an entity above itself? In our trying to contain these three giants together in our country, have we Nigerians, perhaps, been attempting to accomplish the impossible?

    It is true that, even in spite of these almost daunting ethnic national realities, the desire of Nigerians to preserve Nigeria has been, on the whole, considerable. It was against that desire that the Igbo nation’s Biafran venture of 1967-70 failed. However, since then, especially since the 1990s, various ethnic nationalist movements and “self-determination” groups have been springing up in all parts of Nigeria – and, altogether, these have today become a force that Nigeria can only ignore at its own peril.

    Meanwhile, a powerful factor has entered into the Nigerian equation. Most Nigerians are no longer ignorant about the cause of the terrible poverty under which they live – the poverty that makes their lives insecure from crimes, various species of conflicts, terrorism, etc. The root of the poverty is simply this: when the people who controlled most of the power over Nigeria chose to pull all power, all funding and resource control of the country together in the federal centre, they gradually destroyed the ability of Nigeria to generate economic growth, economic innovations, productivity, and wealth. The explanation for that is that it is the states in a federation, plus the local governments – the agencies that are nearest to the lives of the people – that generate most of economic growth and innovation in a federation.  Cast your mind back to the 1950s, the years of Nigeria’s growing prosperity, the years of our prosperous cocoa, groundnuts and palm produce export industries, the years of the development of a cobweb of standard roads across the face of our country, the years of the Regional Development Boards and of our first public industries, the years of the proliferation of primary and secondary schools all over our country, etc,and you will find that our regional and local governments were the engines generating almost all the prosperity. In that kind of setting, the coming of petroleum money since about 1970 would have benefited Nigeria unbelievably. When the controllers of our country down-graded our state and local governments, and turned them into impotent zombies incapable of acting strongly, authoritatively and creatively in their states and local areas, they set the stage for vicious poverty for us the masses of Nigerians. Nigerians now know these things.

    And the consequence is that the two strains in the popular response to the Nigerian situation–namely, assertive ethnic nationalism, and assertive rejection of poverty and deprivation and its effects – have now concatenated. That is why the demand for a National Conference – any sort of National Conference – has become so popular. And that is why Nigerians are accepting President Jonathan’s offer of a National Conference so avidly. Those partisan political opponents of President Jonathan who are casting doubts on his sincerity about a National Conference, or about his ability to run an effective National Conference, and who are suggesting that we should wait for more dependable leaders to give us a really productive National Conference, may have a point. But Nigerians are not in the mood to consider such a point. Nigerians are in a hurry to gather at a conference and restructure their federation and thereby strengthen their ability to fight their way out of poverty.

    Without doubt, most Nigerians sitting at the National Conference have high hopes –hopes of bursting the door wide open to a better Nigeria, a Nigeria of open politics, of level political and economic fields, of stability, and of greater opportunities for all. In the atmosphere of such high expectations, therefore, the following things can suddenly break up Nigeria. First, any attempt, in the conference, by those who have been controlling most power in Nigeria, to resist the restructuring and the change, and to insist on the preservation of the status quo. Second, any show by the federal government of lack of sincerity or seriousness to manage the conference effectively so as to enable it to achieve the restructuring and the change.

    Therefore, the  question whether Nigeria will survive and go on to prosper, or whetherit will break into a number of separate countries, is entirely in the hands of two groups today – the group that has, since independence, controlled most power over Nigeria; and President Jonathan and his men who today control the federal government. History is watching.

  • The visit that never was

    LIKE a coin, there are also two sides to leadership. There is the benefit side and there is the burden side. Most leaders prefer to look at the benefit  because that is what they see when aspiring for office. The benefit side of leadership is full of glitz and glamour. It is the side which does not put too much pressure on a leader. It is the  side where the leader rides in a convoy, with the roads cleared for him.

    He also flies in jets and has a retinue of aides at his beck and call. This is the side which many leaders see. They do not see the other side of carrying their countries’ problems on their heads if need be. They do not see the side of weeping with their people when they weep. They do not see the side of sharing in their people’s grief when they are sorrowing. They only want the sweet side of leadership.

    By so doing, our leaders forget that we are in a bitter-sweet world. So, descending from their Olympian height to be with  their people when they  are suffering is strange to them. Or how else do you explain it that 38 days (counting from today)  after the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls, President Goodluck Jonathan has not visited the place? Of what purpose will the visit be, you may want to ask.

    Will it bring back the girls? We will be missing the point if we are thinking in terms of the visit leading to the return of the girls. For sure, the president’s visit will not lead to the girls’ release by their abductors, but it will buoy up the spirits of their traumatised parents. It is problems  like this that bring out the best in leaders. A leader with the  milk of kindness would have risen to the occasion as soon as news of the girls’ abduction broke and reached out to their parents and guardians.

    With soothing words, he would have assured them that the government would do everything within its power to secure the girls’  release.  Our president never did this. To him, the girls’ abduction was one of those things which would soon fizzle out. It has turned out not to be so. It was the government’s delay in responding to the girls’ abduction that led us to where we are today.

    If the government had moved as swiftly as the girls’ parents did after the abduction, we may not have found ourselves in this cul-de-sac. The government tarried for too long before reacting to the girls’ kidnap. By the time it woke up from its slumber, the girls’ captor, Boko Haram, had taken them far, far away. We are now literally searching for a needle in a haystack. Where and how do we begin the search for these girls when we do not know their location?

    The search for the girls and managing the emotions of their parents are intertwined. The two go together. While looking for the girls, we should also look out for their parents, who will be psychologically and emotionally troubled. This is why  the president must be there for them As our leader, he  owes it a duty to help them overcome their trauma. And how can he do that without visiting Chibok? When last week, news broke that the president would be visiting Chibok, many saw it as an opportunity for him to worm his way into these people’s hearts after his initial false start.

    Let us face it, the president did not handle this matter well ab initio.  His initial cold attitude suggested that he did not believe that such a large number of schoolgirls – 276 – could be abducted at a go. Yes, it is normal to query how that number of people could be kidnapped in one fell swoop, but it is not normal to fold your arms and do nothing when you are in a position to do so. The problem is that we have politicised everything, including human lives. We are now  paying the price for our politicking by this late hour search for the girls.

    The president missed a golden opportunity by not visiting Chibok last Friday as initially planned. Only him knows why he did not undertake the visit, notwithstanding his media manager’s denial that such visit was not on the card. We do not wish to engage in a war of words with the Presidency over whether or not Dr Jonathan was billed to visit Chibok last Friday. Eve if  the visit was not officially  announced, that  does not detract from the fact that there were plans for such visit before it was nipped in the bud.

    The reason for not undertaking the visit is obvious – security reports would have said time was not ripe for it. We should have left the  matter at that instead of the president turning it into an issue on the world stage. During  a press briefing after the regional summit on security in Nigeria at Paris, France, last weekend,   President Jonathan said going to Chibok was not the issue. What should concern everybody, he said,  was finding the girls. ‘’These girls are not held in Chibok. Sometime, people want the president to go to Chibok. If the president goes to Chibok today, it will not solve any problem. The problem facing the president and indeed the Nigerian government is how to get these girls from wherever they are’’.

    Yes, going to Chibok will not bring back the girls, but it will do something to the psyche of their parents and guardians.  The visit will lift up their spirits and portray the president as a compassionate leader. But our president does not see the visit as paramount. Yes, why should he visit Chibok when there are  political battles to be waged in Ekiti and Osun states?  To him,  winning the forthcoming governorship  elections in those states is far more important than visiting Chibok, where many families are pining away in anguish over their abducted daughters.

    It was disingenuous of the president to have cited his visits to the United Nations (UN) House and Force Headquarters in Abuja  after they were bombed to prove that he is a caring leader. What this says of him is that if Chibok had been another major international or national institution  he would have rushed there  for the whole world to see him  making his usual promise to cut Boko Haram to size. The people are tired of this refrain.  We want to see it translated into action.

    The president should acept the burden of leadership just as he enjoys the benefit. Chibok is a burden he must carry whether he likes it or not and the earlier he realises this the better. I pray that it will not be too late by the time he decides to visit Chibok.

  • The terror this time

    Remember this moment for what it’s worth. This is the moment when the neurotic tick-tock of midnight silences our whispers of dawn. This is the moment when velleity of hope submits to our maniacal dreams of tomorrow. This moment, Nigeria dies. Nigeria dies because we kill her. And our tragedy is instructive; it bristles with imprudence of a people caught in the vortex of self-inflicted tragedies: dead oil refineries, dying agriculture, substandard education, insecurity, bandit bankers, and rusty steel sectors.

    Today, we witness an eighth tragedy: Boko Haram, a northeast terrorist sect. As you read, paths leading into Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States are littered with ghosts and entrails of lives horridly cut down by the sect; dismembered limbs, pierced eyes, ear slivers, jaw splinters, gouged lips, odd tibias, skin flaps, and toes clutter the roads like glowworms and slugs in the wake of bloody bomb blasts.

    Just recently, the terrorist sect reportedly abducted over 250 school girls in Borno. In the wake of the incident, Nigeria flounders in a sea of seething protests anchored by civil rights groups, celebrities, and politicians. An interesting dimension to the protests however, manifests at the involvement of overseas politicians and celebrities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and media.

    A fascinating feature of the protest is the trademark brandishing of placards bearing the inscription, “Bringbackourgirls” by protesters continually posing for photographs to be posted on the internet and published or broadcast in mainstream media. This aspect of the campaign gathers momentum in the wake of Boko Haram’s broadcast of a video showing some of the abducted girls; the leader of the group demands that the Nigerian government exchange some of their incarcerated members for the girls.

    Prior to the broadcast of the video, the Nigerian leadership had come under virulent and wholly justifiable criticisms for its insensate response to the situation by the Nigerian citizenry. While it struggles to deal with resentment at home, disconcerting indignation and ridicule are hauled at the nation’s leadership from abroad; the unanimous verdict is that the President Goodluck Jonathan-led government is ineffectual, clueless and virtually non-existent.

    President Jonathan, given his antecedents and characteristic incompetence, has no doubt earned the resentment and worldwide ridicule he continually suffers but what is utterly unacceptable is for the United States of America (USA) and its apparatchik of android ‘statesmen’ and enslaved media to exaggerate the Nigerian situation via undisguised insults and insinuations of greater chaos into the minds of the citizenry.

    Consider for instance, US Senator, John McCain’s ridicule of the Nigerian president; analyzing McCain’s utterances, Ishaan Tharoor, a former Senior Editor with TIME Magazine, now Foreign Affairs writer with Washington Post stated thus: “An inveterate hawk, McCain always champions the U.S.’s ability to swiftly – and often militarily – change the facts on the ground in a crisis-spot, be it Iraq, Syria, Ukraine or anywhere else. But comments he made Tuesday, demanding yet another American intervention, deserve scrutiny for another reason: rudeness.”

    McCain said to Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin: “If the U.S. knew where [the kidnapped girls] were, I certainly would send in U.S. troops to rescue them, in a New York minute I would, without permission of the host country…I wouldn’t be waiting for some kind of permission from some guy named Goodluck Jonathan.”

    McCain’s juvenile and uncultured outburst comes in the wake of coordinated and very manipulative reportage of the Nigerian crisis by the American press. The onslaught by the American media features desperate attempts by the New York Times, CNN, among others to project Nigeria as a failed state deserving urgent U.S. rescue. It gets more interesting to see CNN’s Christiane Amanpour embark on the kind of insidious reportage she perpetrated throughout the Egyptian and Libyan crises. The highly prejudiced journalist manipulated facts and outright lies to justify America’s divisive role in the conflicts; the consequence is U.S.’s backing of a dictatorship in Egypt, the murder of Muammar Ghadaffi, and institutionalization of violence and bloodshed in the countries. It’s equally amusing to see the CNN reporter that travelled to Chibok in Borno to interview families of abducted girls struggle to affect compassion for the affected families; her pitiful effort is laughable for its futility and obvious desperation to produce a touching, Emmy award winning scene for the camera.

    Why are Nigerian activists and the international community suddenly finding their voices and humanity now? Recently, Boko Haram, in the wake of several mass murders, killed 59 students, all boys, of the Federal Government College (FCE), Buni Yadi, Yobe State, while they slept in their dormitory. In the attack, which occurred around 2 am, the teenage victims were shot and burnt to death as the gunmen torched the hostel after spraying them with bullets. The howl of the students maniacally butchered in their sleep and the sorrowful tenor of their parents’ ceaseless cries mutually resonate a macabre plot of civilization gone awry even now. Why couldn’t every Nigerian come out to march against the terrorist sect and the Nigerian leadership’s insensitivity in the wake of the attack? Are the lives of the murdered boys so worthless and expendable? Were they less valuable to the Nigerian society than the abducted girls?

    At the backdrop of Nigerian civil societies’ callousness and duplicity, the American press perpetrates its characteristic manipulative journalism, perpetuating in same breath, the notion that the Nigerian Military had been forewarned about four hours before Boko Haram struck. American politicians and media continue to pillory the Nigerian Military for its incompetence in dealing with the crisis even as they failed to accord the U.S. government and military similar treatment for ignoring security warnings about the September 11, 1993 World Trade Center terrorist attack, several months before the incident – about 3, 000 people died in the attack.

    Sadly, the coordinated assault and smear campaign launched by American ‘statesmen’ and media against the Nigerian government excites the applause of a greater number of Nigerian activists. The tragedy of the latter’s ignorance is accentuated by their inability to see through America’s sinister plot to aggravate the Nigerian situation via its state-sponsored psyops (psychological operations). This strategy involves a propagandist plot anchored on an Aggressive Cue-like media theory and disruptive security intelligence reportage.

    Nonetheless, the “Bringbackourgirls” campaign gathers momentum as more people across the globe identify with it; all it takes is for a celebrity, politician or nondescript character to pose before the camera and brandish a placard screaming “Bringbackourgirls.” What difference does it make if Michelle Obama, America’s first lady holds such a placard before the camera? What difference does it make if celebrities worldwide do likewise? Of what consequence is infantile diatribe like McCain’s to the Nigerian state?

    The consequences are discernible in President Jonathan’s jitters and frantic request for help from the U.S., Israeli and other so-called “first world” super powers. It will be great if the Americans, Israeli and so on truly “assist” with their “intelligence” apparatuses in rescuing the abducted girls and wiping out Boko Haram. It will also be appreciated if they can quietly leave Nigeria as soon as their “humanitarian mission” is accomplished. But this is wishful thinking no doubt.

    • To be continued.

  • Darkness falls

    SINCE the civil war ended in 1970, Nigeria has been peaceful. Although there have been some low moments, we have always sailed through the storm.  The only major threat we have faced is that of military takeover. Mercifully, military dictatorship is now also in the past  following the blundering and bumbling regimes of Gen Ibrahim Babangida and the late Gen Sani Abacha.

    With an uninterrupted democratic government since 1999, Nigeria has never had it so good even though it could be better. By the 29th of this month, we will be celebrating 15 years of uninterrupted democracy despite such irritants as the adoption of Sharia in some parts of the country, Niger Delta militancy and the Boko Haram insurgency. Like military coups d’etat, we seem to have overcome the Sharia and Niger Delta militancy challenges.

    These have been replaced by Boko Haram, a bunch of Islamic fundamentalists, bent on rewriting the Quran and the Hadith, the teachings of Prophet Mohammed. Boko Haram inched its way into the nation’s subconscious mind  stealthily, pretending to be propagating Islam.

    With the way it is going about its campaign,  Boko Haram cannot be the poster-group for Islam. It has done everything contrary to the tenets of the religion. The prophet admonishes Muslims to seek knowledge even in as far a place as China. In his days, China was considered to be faraway. Today, Boko Haram has turned this advice  on its head. To the group, Muslims should not seek knowledge except to be versed in Islamic matters.

    In today’s world, it is impossible to do away with western education. Instead of seeing western education as a sin, what Boko Haram should fight for is the teaching of Muslim students in Arabic and not English language. The problem is that Nigeria being a secular state, it will be difficult to adopt Arabic as the language for teaching in our schools.

    But really is that what Boko Haram wants? Its demands are not clear because they keep changing by the day. Today, it is that education is bad. Tomorrow, it is girls should marry – at what age it  did not say. The day after, it is ”we are waging war against Christians and infidels”. Who determines who an infidel is? Is it someone who takes it upon himself to kill people under the guise of propagating Islam? Can an infidel be worse than a person who kidnaps schoolgirls in their dormitory in the wee hours of the night?

    Abubakar Shekau or what he calls himself should look inwards in his search for an infidel. Boko Haram, the group he leads, cuts the perfect picture of an infidel. If Shekau is not an infidel, he would not have stormed the Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS) in Chibok, Borno State, in the dead of night on April 14 and abducted over 200 girls.

    Only an infidel can do that and still come out to boast that he would sell the girls ”by Allah”. Why call the name of Allah in vain? All he is after is the gain he can make from the girls’ abduction. So, he should not drag Allah’s name into his deliberate and clinically executed plan of kidnapping those girls for money. What he never bargained for before he threw the country into this darkness is the global outrage over the girls’ abduction. He may have bitten more than he can chew over their abduction.

    Shekau’s time is up, but like others before him, he does not realise it yet. He is  enjoying the few minutes he has left in the limelight. Let him continue to appear on videos, mouthing inanities and boasting about his prowess and invisibilty. What is more, he is giving conditions for the release of the girls. Are the girls those he abducted on April 14 or those that fell into his hand before that day? If those were not the Chibok girls, where then did he get them from? Does it mean he has been abducting girls all along without the security agencies being aware?

    It is incredible that such large scale abduction of girls has been on for long without anyone raising an eye brow. Where is Shekau keeping the girls? Here in the country or outside it? Can’t his hide-out be traced? Is he being shielded by some people in the society? Who are these people? Can’t they be fished out to  lead us to Shekau’s hide-out? For sure, he cannot have one hide-out, but no matter the number of his hide-outs, the noose is fast closing in on him.

    For how long will evil triumph over good?  Only for a short time. That being so, the only option Shekau has is to let the girls go or be ready to face the consequences of his action. Let him remember, ”there is God ooo”, and that God is not the one he calls in vain to support his excesses.