The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

The mirror effect

This minute presents with the umpteenth scare in Nigeria’s grisly drama perhaps. The recent being the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency’s (NDLEA)’s indictment of Nigeria’s embattled ‘super cop,’ suspended Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Abba Kyari, as a kingpin of an international drug ring operating the Brazil-Nigeria-Ethiopia route.

The NDLEA’s disclosure, though mired in melodrama, stunned widespread segments of the country. It is best appreciated by its import for the country’s anti-drug trafficking campaign.

A few weeks earlier, in the first three weeks of last month (January) to be precise, at least 486 people, mostly unarmed civilians, were reportedly killed by terrorists across Nigeria – an average of 22 people a day, according to Premium Times.

Over 80 percent of the killings were carried out by terror groups in the North-west and North-central zones while about 50 percent of the total killings occurred in Niger State, North-central Nigeria.

The Niger State Governor, Sani Bello, announced that at least 220 people were killed in his state between January 1 and 17.

Thus January unfurled cloaked in blood and sadism of murderous characters. The terrorists maimed rural Nigeria, they murdered fathers, raped and abducted mothers and daughters, leaving Nigeria cringing in anticipation of the next grisly attack.

Thus at the start of the year, the dominance of despair seemed so complete and insurmountable, but the political class, split along party lines, issued habitual excuses and ripostes to criticism.

Through the carnage of the previous year, shady separatists emerged from the woodwork, killing unarmed civilians and law enforcers; they chanted bloody banality to the politicians’ insensate bromides. And Nigeria yielded to hysteria.

As 2022 records more funeral pyres, the political class hustle for spoils en route to the 2023 general elections. Politicians know the electorate through sadistic plowing; nailing them down by spikes of cash and bigotries, they catch their shrieks in a metaphoric calabash.

The vessel is chillingly archetypal. The gourd vine connotes pathologic self-preservation. The ruling class’ metaphoric calabash sheaths its exaggerated pride and self-idolatry. A poisoned chalice.

Like the Biblical bawds of Babylon, they hold their gourds scummy with lust and amorality. At a previous general election, one governor, at the end of his eight-year maladministration and impoverishment of the state, sought to install his son-in-law as his successor, to continue his pauperisation legacy. Another with a curious kink for risible caps fought to install his “chosen wiz kid” as his successor in a badly governed state, where the electorate fought to escape his asphyxiating tenure.

The insolence persists across political platforms; shady politicians pant to serpents interred in their possessed spirits. We have seen such individuals and their bungling parties sadistically maul tenet to wile and policies to streaming blood. Nonetheless, they reflect our degeneracy back to us. They actuate rather than constrain our perversions.

It’s about time the electorate divested the country of their cancerous forms. Lest we end up as tissues and blood in their gourds. Nonetheless, the ruling class reflects our degeneracy back to us. They actuate rather than constrain our perversions.

Boorstin would call this the mirror effect. The political class’ administrative hearse becomes the railcar of our death-tending impulses: terrorism, kidnap for ransom, and armed robbery flourishes. Fraud, embezzlement of public funds persist in public and private corporations.

The maladies persist through dispensations. In a few months, voters will once again, fall victim to their lusts and an ageless ruse repeatedly weaponised by the ruling class. Every politician seeking public office understands that the political arena is a theatre, where the most essential skill required is artifice.

But that is simply one way to look at it. The political arena equally unfurls like a red-light district, an expansive brothel, where electorate bodies are the stringed instruments hysterically plucked by politician-patrons.

In this decadent theatre, politicians emerge as master harpists, making dark melodies to the electorate’s torment. In anguish, the latter gains identity as faceless natives: bleeding sap condemned to infernal dystopia.

The discerning see through the artifice. They know the pleading candidate’s smile masks a scowl. They understand that the incumbent power divide and the opposition seeking to usurp power from it are birds of a feather, who use the media, among other tools of mass propaganda, to create faux intimacy with the citizenry.

Politicians know they do not need to be competent, sincere, or honest to win votes and elections, they only need to appear to have these qualities. More importantly, they know they must be adept at creating and establishing a false narrative of their sainthood and the opposition’s villainy. The consistency and emotionality of the story are paramount.

And the narrative must be entertaining and wildly infused with absurd drama. Thus such scandalous affairs involving the paedophile, bribe-taking, or machete-wielding governors were inconsequential in considerations of their suitability for re-election. Rather than make them pariahs, it earned them empathy and votes.

How do illiterate voters avoid the snare of such con men in 2023? The answer lies in the capacity of the politically literate to enlighten the ignorant masses. Yet the platforms for achieving such goals are non-existent.

The electorate must make its way past the fraud and extortion of the seasoned politicians and younger aspirants who are out to lure the psyche into committing political capital – that is, electoral votes – to unsound judgment and investment.

But to achieve this, the Nigerian voter must learn to identify the false messiah from the true patriot, the self-seeking candidate from the altruist. As medieval royalty deployed court drama and conspiracies to divert the attention of their subjects from daily miseries, so do the ruling class divert attention from the real issues at the approach of the next general elections.

It’s about time the electorate devised the plot of Nigeria’s political theatre; the real issues aren’t what the ruling class narrates to us. The real narrative is in everything they would rather not discuss.

What is the nature of government expenditure on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the result of such spending? What is the real impact of the anti-corruption fight? Of government spending, how much is truly committed to education and health financing? Why does the government still pay itself outrageous salaries?

What has President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration done differently from its predecessors, beyond the bounds of its statutory responsibilities? Do Nigeria’s two most prominent parties deserve a single vote? Why?

The theme of the forthcoming elections, as advanced by contenders in previous ones, would be ‘salvation.’ Each candidate would profess to be the most competent and visionary of our world.

Yet there isn’t a candidate with a plan to commit, at least 40 percent, of Nigeria’s annual budget to health and education – split at 20 percent each. Can any of the candidates do that? Does any possess such courage and vision?

Of the contenders, would any agree to the surgical trimming of the National Assembly to a unicameral legislature, while legislative work is reduced to a part-time assignment?

And even if the politics of their preferred candidate, exude the stink of the night soil man, several voters would dance and sing, bicker and kill, to guarantee him or her easy access to public office.

So doing, the Nigerian voter creates a plenum from which he would not escape for another four years. This would be blamed on voter illiteracy at crunch time when reality bites harder, and the frenzied, ignorant voter of today relapses to sober awareness.

February 17, 2022
Buhari’s Executive Order 10 as Greek gift

Nullifying President Buhari’s Executive Order 10 initiated to grant financial autonomy to the states judiciary and legislature, the Supreme Court last week reminded us all that “this country is still a federation and the 1999 Constitution it operates is a federal one”. The constitution, it added, “provides a clear delineation of powers between the state and the federal government.” Signed on May 22, 2020 by the president, Executive Order 10 was to enforce the provisions of the 1999 Constitution as altered by the 4th Alteration Act, No.4 of 2017, which guarantees financial autonomy for the judiciary and the legislature at the state level.

The judiciary, it is said, exists to sustain a society governed by reason with ‘descent men far removed from the quarrelsome, competitive, selfish creatures’ of a perfect state of nature’. Federalism, which protects individuals and groups in deeply divided societies, is one social system through which model builders since the end of the Second World War agreed unity in diversity could be achieved.

Unfortunately the judiciary became not just the scourge of the nation but the greatest threat to our federal arrangement since 1962 when it decided to undermine our federal principles by playing the role of an accessory to crime against our nation by an unenlightened political class’ application of the rule of the jungle to manage our affairs.

First, the ruling coalition driven by political vendetta instituted a Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the activities of the National Bank which was a regional issue over which the federal government had no power. In 1962, following the victory of the Western regional opposition party at the London Privy Council, the judiciary, against the spirit of our federal constitution aided the Balewa administration to take over the Western Region. It followed the take-over with a tragic-comedy, called a judicial trial which convicted and jailed the leader of opposition, Chief Obafemi Awolowo ‘for treasonable felony’ and a more comical offence, ‘conspiracy to commit an unlawful act’.

After demonstrating its bankruptcy through its ignoble role in the federal government contrived Coker Commission of Inquiry into Statutory Corporations in the Western Region and the prosecution and conviction of the opposition leader, Obafemi Awolowo for treasonable felony, the judiciary, casting itself in an image of anarchist, went on to give a perverse verdict over the 1963 census crisis between the north and east which it dismissed as a ‘political issue’.

In 1966, the judiciary was behind General Ironsi’s Decree 34 that temporarily turned a multi-ethnic Nigeria to a unitary state. In 1979, President Shehu Shagari secured his presidency courtesy of Richard Akinjide and the Supreme Court’s twelve two third pronouncement. Buhari’s retrogressive and draconian laws were crafted by the judiciary.

The Third Republic was also aborted by the judiciary as it became a willing tool in the hands of Babangida whose N40 billion eight years ‘transition without end’ finally collapsed partly on account of immoral and irresponsible midnight judgment of late Justice Ikpeme. Abacha secured legitimacy and ravaged our land through Onagoruwa and Nwabueze, two leading lights of the judiciary following the collapse of Babangida’s fraudulent interim contraption.

Abdul Salami Abubakar who came to stop the drift in 1988 was aided by the judiciary to foist on the nation the 1999 constitution which was more unitary than federal with its consolidation of an exclusive list with 68 items as against 45 of our independence federal constitution. The result is the current “duplication and multiplication of government departments in an effort to find job for the boys”.

Although last week’s annulled President Buhari’s Executive Order 10 was meant to allow the Supreme Court justices and other judicial officers to directly manage annual budget appropriations for the judiciary the same way the legislature has been doing in the last few years with dire consequences, the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Greek gift seems to have saved for the judiciary whatever credibility it has left. The novel idea of Supreme Court judges and other judicial officers awarding contracts for capital projects, fixing their own salaries and presiding over daily disbursement of funds will amount to unnecessary distraction for the judiciary.

The madness currently going in the legislature where unrestrained lawmakers cornered about 25% of our annual budget ought to have been sufficient disincentive for those pushing the idea. Unfortunately those running Ministry of Justice don’t seem to believe the judiciary exists to sustain a society governed by reason.

The Supreme Court ruling has also exposed both the federal and state governments as enemies of federalism. It is not difficult to see their hypocrisy. First the federal government has no objection to Section 81 of the 1999 constitution that places the responsibility of the payment of the salaries and emoluments of the judges of the three courts viz State High Courts, Sharia Court of Appeal and Customary Court of Appeal precisely because that allows it to exert influence on the judicial officers of those federal institutions since it is generally agreed that he who pays the piper dictates the tunes. There is therefore less incentive acceding to the states demand for funding of capital projects and refunding of N66 billion being an amount the states claimed they had so far spent on capital projects for the three courts in their respective states.

On the other hand the 36 state governors that sought for an order of the apex court to compel the federal government to take up funding of capital projects for state High Courts, Sharia Court of Appeal and Customary Court of Appeal want to eat their cake and have it. They exert their own influence on the judiciary through funding of capital projects and procurement of cars. But now they would rather have the federal government pay for them.

It is a known fact that it is rare for federal high courts to rule against the governors of the states where they operate. We could not have suddenly forgotten how a particular South-south governor built a structure and provided an accommodation for a federal judicial officer transferred to his state within two weeks. Justice Marcel Awokulehin did not waste time before dismissing the 170-count charge of corruption involving the laundering of millions of dollars brought against that governor by EFCC at Asaba Federal High court on December 17, 2009. The scandalous judgment confirmed once again the preference for the rule of the jungle to manage our affairs.

But in 2012, it took justice Nickolas Pitts London Southwark Crown court less than one hour to sentence the same governor to 13 years imprisonment in United Kingdom prison for eight of the 23 charges he had pleaded guilty to.

The presidential Executive Order 10 was ostensibly meant to facilitate the implementation of the constitutional provisions to aid the states legislature and judiciary in curing the constitutional wrong of their financial autonomy which the state have always denied. It was however commendable that “despite the pitiable eyesore that judicial officers and staff go through financially at the hands of state executives, who often flout constitutional and court orders to their whims and caprices”, the judiciary realized Buhari’s Executive Order 10 was nothing but a Greek gift, from a former military dictator who has for six years as a democratically elected leader tried without much success to prove he has faith in the rule of the law.

February 17, 2022
Stop the pandemic of murders

Hardly any day passes without a report of murders in Nigeria as if life is so cheap that killing human beings has lost its meaning. Some of the gruesome murders are committed by highway robbers, herders and other miscreants who murder to instil fear into our people. They waylay people and kidnap their victims after which they will ask for huge ransoms which had to be quickly paid or else the lives of their captives would be snuffed out. Sometimes they collect the ransoms and still kill their victims either for fun or for fear of being recognized if and when police capture them. This whole thing is symptomatic of total breakdown of law and order. This breakdown of law and order is due to under-policing or poor policing because there are just not enough police to cover the length and breadth of this vast country. When we make this point, government reacts by giving the Police Service Commission order to recruit more police and the figures bandied around range from10,000 to 100,000. These have been the recurring figures since 2015 and we don’t know if these are actual figures or political figures to silence the demands of the people.

When everyone demands that we should have state police, the federal government alone dismisses this unanimous demand by states as unrealistic because most of the states cannot even pay salaries of their civil servants. This is not a good reason. I don’t think the constitution gives the federal government absolute power over internal security. If we are running a proper federation, the states should have power to raise state police and even the local governments and the cities should be empowered to raise their police for maintenance of law and order in their various areas of jurisdictions. The United States which we blindly ape when it suits us gives state, counties, (districts) cities and even colleges and universities powers to have police forces. The argument of not having money to pay them does not hold water. If states and local governments raise police forces, they will pass appropriate legislations to finance them such as levying police tax which our undertaxed people will gladly pay.

Aren’t our people paying mai-guardi for personal protection? Don’t we generate our own electricity in the absence of state electricity? Are we not reticulating water from our wells into our homes in the absence of urban water supply? All we ask for is security. If we can’t have what naturally belongs to mankind through the agency of our governments, can this federal government pass legislation to allow those who are willing and able, after proper vetting and background checks, to carry concealed weapons for self-protection? A situation in which some vagrants would barge into our homes and start raping our wives, daughters, mothers and threatening to rape our menfolk is no longer acceptable, if we must say. This is where the failure of government has got us to.

The other aspect of this pandemic of murders is the widespread ritual killings and in some cases outright cannibalism! A few cases will drive this point home. Right in the centre of mainland Lagos a few days ago, a middle aged man in Ebute Metta was said to be in the practice of calling unsuspecting people to his home where he would club them and remove vital organs from their bodies and throw their remains into the water channels near his home. He was apparently selling these “spare parts” to “medicine men” for money-making rituals. He was caught after he had murdered four people and hopefully justice will be swift and without mercy based on an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I hope none of our legal crusaders is thinking of abolishing death penalty in the face of this pandemic of murders.

A second example is provided by a young student allegedly of LASU who invited his girlfriend who was in her final year to accompany him to his mother’s home somewhere in Ikire in Osun State for the purpose of her meeting her future mother in law. The young girl from Mowe, a sleepy village in Ogun State excitedly followed her boyfriend to Ikire. On getting there, the mother of the boy told the young lovers from Lagos to follow her to see her “pastor”. Apparently mother and son had planned with the so-called pastor that they were bringing the human sacrifice for their mad money ritual. The poor girl on reaching the pastor was slaughtered while her boyfriend and the mother tied her down like a ram! The three murderers have been arrested and the poor mother of the murdered girl is waiting for swift and sure justice and I hope the three culprits will be hanged until they are dead!

The third example is the young postgraduate student who lodged in a so-called Hilton Hotel in one of the “Origbo” villages outside Ife. He came to write an examination at Obafemi Awolowo University. He was apparently a regular customer of the hotel. This last time, some people went into his room while he was sleeping, murdered him, wrapped him in the hotel’s bedsheets and buried him in shallow grave not far from the hotel . The owner and some of his staff were arrested and detained in police cell in Osogbo. Somehow the case was transferred to Abuja and from there the Abuja court dismissed the case apparently for lack of jurisdiction and hopefully the Osun judiciary will start de novo the case and hopefully justice will be served!

The fourth case in these grisly murders cases was that of two teenage sisters in Asaba Delta State, who colluded with their boyfriends to murder their apparently wealthy father so that they can inherit their father’s wealth. Poor man was murdered by his own children! The case went to court and the judge, God bless him, sentenced the two teenagers to be hanged until they are dead! These girls can go and spend their father’s wealth in hell!

Another case was that of a woman running an apparently popular restaurant somewhere outside Umuahia selling human meat and people knowingly go there to eat human meat as if they were cannibals! We were not told how the woman was getting her “meat supply”. She is cooling her feet in police cell. One hopes the case will be well investigated and prosecuted. Cannibals do not belong to any decent society .They must be uprooted and sent to heaven for divine judgement!

There was the case of a young graduate looking for a job in Akwa Ibom. She was lured into her death by a young man who was well known to the people where he lived but not to the police until he had committed this heinous case of wasting a young girl who had lots of years ahead of her if things were normal.

The final case was the little five-year old Hanifa in Kano. She was kidnapped by the owner of the private school she was attending. The gang apparently owned by the school proprietor demanded for some ransom. It took some time for the poor girl’s parent to deliver the money. By the time the money was delivered, the poor girl was killed and yet these evil ones collected the money. The case has attracted national attention. The president commiserated with the governor of Kano and the wife of the president has gone to Kano to see the governor and the parents of the girl. The president’s wife is calling for swift justice. I join her in this call and in her anger that the state cannot even protect an innocent child from being murdered.

There is no country in the world that does not have its criminal challenges. Hundreds of thousands of people in the USA are killed through gun violence every year but at least one has the right to protect oneself through legal ownership of concealed weapons. The problem in the USA is that background check is not thorough thus permitting crazies, mentally incapacitated people and drug heads to buy weapons. In Canada, the United Kingdom, and most of Europe and Asia, rampart murders are a rarity. Nigeria is becoming notorious for many things like Advanced fee fraud, cybercrimes, human smuggling, drug smuggling, prostitution and now pandemic of murders. People suggest it is because of poverty and economic hardship and general hopelessness. Well this may be true but the main cause is lack of policing and corrupt judicial systems which allows criminals to go scot free most of the time.

February 17, 2022
Royalty-cum-rascality

THE invaders came barely 24 hours after the archway or arch was remounted. They took off from the nearby Abule, which is mostly populated by people indigenous to Arepo in Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State. The archway, which has a history behind it, is the entry point into Journalists’ Estate Phase 1. It was first erected in 2003 when that place was a thick forest. A few journalists braved the odds and moved into the estate some two, three years later.

But some people, especially the invaders and their ilk, have been trying hard to rewrite history. Their intent is to ensure that the archway never returns in place after the ongoing construction of the Journalists’ Estate Road, which runs into Funke Fadugba Road, and tapers off before Beachland Estate, which stands at the end of the long road. The archway was pulled down by the Ogun State Governmnet when the road work began.

With the job done now beyond the spot where the archway was, the Journalists’ Estate Residents Development Association (JERDA) Phase 1 or JERDA 1 applied for the remounting of the arch. Its request was granted and on February 7, the arch went up again to the delight of residents, who trooped out for the ceremony. The ceremony was witnessed by some top Ogun State government officials. The next day residents were shocked when they heard of the destruction of the archway by the invaders made up of a combined force of residents of Abule and Beachland Estate.

The invaders, who had the backing of the Olu of Arepo in Council, came with all sorts of weapons. But when their digger could not do the job, they went to hire a Hyab, a utility vehicle commonly used for the erection of electric poles and other allied jobs. They got the Hyab, with the aid of one Emmanuel Akudinobi of Beachland Estate Residents Association (BERA). In no time, they brought down the multi-million naira arch, boasting: they ((JERDA 1 residents) never see nothing. We just start with them.

It was not an empty threat. And it did not just start today; nor even on February 8 when the invaders had the effrontery to enter a private estate to commit an illegal act. If the few JERDA 1 residents around that fateful morning had not acted maturely, there would have been a breakdown of law and order. That is what the Olu of Arepo in Council and BERA want, but JERDA 1 will not play into their hands because we are enlightened and law abiding citizens.

What do the Olu of Arepo, Oba Solomon Oyebi, and BERA want? They are against JERDA 1 having a archway, claiming that it impedes movement. That is false. An archway does not hinder movement; it is an entrance under an arch, which is a reversed U-shaped structure, with an opening. So how can that hinder movement? The arch is meant to secure JERDA 1. As a security post, like similar security posts, under different names, at BERA itself and other estates in Arepo, people and vehicles are stopped to duly identify themselves before being granted access.

Was former Lagos police chief Hakeem Odumosu not stopped to identify himself at Magodo Phase 2 the other day at the estate’s security post? Is it illegal to ask motorists and others to identify themselves at a gate or an arch or a security bar, like the one BERA hurriedly removed at one of its entrances last week, before being allowed in?

In its place now is the stump of the short upright pole which used to hold the cross bar. A signage bearing Pomat Peters Way has been hung there. At the appropriate time, we will confront them with proof of what used to be there.Only BERA and Oyebi can tell the world why they are against JERDA 1 protecting its estate. If BERA can secure its estate and Oyebi also protect his palace with a gate, what is wrong in JERDA 1 putting up an arch for the same purpose?

JERDA 1 did not break any law by remounting its arch, as approved by the government. So, there is no need for another approval by Oyebi or any other local authority, power or principality for that time. Oyebi is not higher than the state. Did BERA get his approval before erecting the bar, which it hurriedly and mischievously removed at that its entrance close to the military outpost where soldiers are standing sentry?

What is BERA waiting for? It should go a step further and dismantle the other security bar at its second entrance so as to remain, for now, in the good books of the Olu and his subjects. Sooner than later, what brought them together will scatter them. JERDA 1 has been lawful and continues to bend backward to accommodate Oyebi and BERA despite their tantrums. JERDA 1 is for peace, but they are for war, in whatever they say or do. JERDA 1 will remain peaceful because it believes in the rule of law and not in the use of force.

The law, JERDA 1 believes, will eventually take its course. But one thing is certain, JERDA 1 will not fold its arms and allow anybody to ride roughshod over it. It is in Oyebi’s interest to sheathe his sword and allow JERDA 1 be. Come to think of it, what did JERDA 1 buy from him that it did not pay? He should be thankful for the coming of JERDA 1 to his domain. Has he forgotten so soon what the community used to look like just 20 years ago?

Unlike him, JERDA 1 has not forgotten. The estate’s coming to Arepo is of the Lord’s doing. This is why JERDA 1 is treading gingerly over this matter, and it will continue to do so because it does not want to destroy what it has built with its own hands. But Oyebi and BERA should not take this as cowardice.

Kyari’s fall and the Tokunbo fuel

THE arrest of super-cop Abba Kyari on Monday came on the heels of the lingering fuel scarcity. Kyari, a well decorated police officer, who was honoured by the House of Representatives in June, 2020, appears to be the architect of his own fall. He was suspended last year, following allegations of his dealings with Rahmon Abass alias Hushpuppi by America’s Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI). But he seemed to have observed the suspension in the breach. How is that possible in a police with layers of command, especially as someone else had been named to take Kyari’s place?

The fuel crisis is biting harder, instead of abating. Fuel queues are getting longer by the day at filling stations, while the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd keeps passing the buck instead of taking “full” responsibility for the importation of the off-speculation (off-spec) petrol that led the nation into this bind. The Tokunbo petrol came from, where else? Antwerp, Belgium, the home of used (Tokunbo) vehicles which dot Nigerian roads. These are vexed national issues, which painfully I have sidestepped today to comment on a matter that concerns my constituency. I crave your indulgence.

February 17, 2022
My Participations: Beyond Adebanjo and Tinubu family squabbles

The reading culture seems to be disappearing among Nigerians especially our youths. No thanks to our different institutions of socialization, the family, schools, the church and the media that have not helped matters. Our students hide under social media to avoid reading even newspapers. Our prosperity prophets knowing that our youths hardly read any portion of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation exploit their ignorance by promising prosperity without hard work. With the media, our youths suffer double jeopardy.

First, the media, owned by those who wish to impose their world view on the rest of society or those who wish to protect their disproportionate share of the nation’s resources they cornered, is not a free market place of ideas. But the success of the media lies in giving a false narrative that its ultimate goal is the pursuit of public interest as against private profit. I suspect that is what Alhaji Jose, the doyen of Nigeria journalism describes as ‘walking the tight rope’.

On the other hand, since it takes a discerning mind to make sense out of information and misinformation the media dish out daily even in societies with a reading culture, many of our contemporary media managers who realize that an un-reading public will swallow their prejudices and those of the tendencies they represent, understand taking pains to ‘walk the tight rope” is an unprofitable enterprise.

This perhaps explains why a significant portion of the electronic media decided to swindle their audience with their coverage of the presentation of Bisi Akande’s 559-page book – My Participation a few weeks back.

It was obvious from the coverage that the objective was to exploit the intra-party squabbles among leading Yoruba politicians in order to further destabilise the Yoruba nation instead of highlighting serious self-inflicted problems threatening the survival of the nation as identified by Chief Akande in the book.

To some of the electronic outfits, a sentence in Akande’s 559 page book – ‘Tinubu told me later that after he presented Adebanjo’s C of O to him, Adebanjo was always pestering Tinubu until he helped build a house on the plot’ – defines the book. To further exploit the schism between the warring father and son who have for years engaged in public duel, they assembled experts to talk about the implications of Pa Akande’s claim about helping his father to build a house. Pa Ayo Adebanjo was granted an elaborate interview to deny and denounce his son while he was challenged not only to defend his claim with evidence but also explain to Nigerians the source of his money. Their decision to weep louder than the bereaved betrayed their real intention.

Because they knew Nigerians, especially the youth, have not read Akanke’s latest contribution to the literature on crisis of leadership in Nigeria, or plan to read any other books that could help in proper articulation of Nigerian problems, they focused on that one sentence ignoring far more important issues such as the ‘national question’, sovereign national conference long advocated by the Yoruba, exploitation of the desperation of Yoruba for a workable structure by Obasanjo, their own son and President Jonathan’s decision to do the same on the eve of an election in which he was facing an imminent defeat because of the emergence of APC, and Obasanjo’s letter that had accused him of ‘corruption and comprehensive incompetence’ . They bungled an opportunity to interrogate Akanke’s claim that Jonathan summoned a national conference of his own image on the eve of an election as a survival strategy. They similarly did not bother to interrogate why Jonathan failed to implement some of the conference recommendations that could be handled administratively.

The book also read hypocrisy into Obasanjo’s transition after a lifelong preaching the values of dictatorship and one party state to sudden advocate of restructuring. According to him, he, Obasanjo was ‘an important member of Gowon’s military junta who divided Nigeria by decree into 12 states without rhythm or reason, second in command when Murtala Muhammed split Nigeria by decree without principles into 19 states, had influence with Babangida who spilt the country to 30 states by decree’ before he and his PDP ruled Nigeria for 16 years.

Akande on page 472 of the book accused Obasanjo of being behind the nation’s current misfortune since it was his regime (1975-1979) that amended Decrees 13 of 1970 and 9 of 1971 which began the unfortunate transfer of states’ residual functions to the central government. This was a precursor to Decree 21 of 1998 which transferred to the federal government, the power to collect all taxes and subsequent increase in the exclusive legislative list from 45 in the 1960 constitution to 68 in the 1999 Abdulsalami Abubakar’s ‘military’ constitution.

If we are looking for the source of political irresponsibility and official corruption at the federal government level, duplication and multiplication of government departments and bureau to find jobs for the boys’ in the same manner unviable states and LGAs were created, Akande says we don’t need to look any further.

And quoting Obafemi Awolowo, Akande says “Obasanjo and his military adventurers are the reason that have made the work of government to become unduly complex, inextricably tangled, extremely unwieldy and wasteful and productive of disharmony and discontent among our people”. Akanke’s conclusion is that “Nigeria is now in chaos created by leaders with military orientation to promote corruption with appropriate cover-ups.”

Akande in the book reserves the last words for our current military new breed politicians who continue to promote and sustain the current military fraud, called Nigeria instead of working towards returning to ‘our political and economic viability of our founding fathers’.

The media especially the electronics media continue to play the ostrich like those who are currently benefitting from the nation’s tragedy by giving the wrong impression that Akande’s My Participations is about Adebanjo and Tinubu’s family squabbles.

On the contrary, it is a good book on the crisis of Nigerian leadership that should be recommended because of its heuristic value to all Nigerians who want to know where the rain started to beat us and the real actors behind the nation’s current travails.

February 10, 2022
NNPC’s litmus test

It always creeps in from nowhere. In the twinkling of an eye, fuel queues will be all over the place, impeding traffic and leaving the motorist wondering if this was the same road he took the previous day. As he beholds the snaky queues of vehicles at filling stations, as he drives out on a new day, he mumbles inwardly why it did not cross his mind to buy petrol last night on his way home.

As a motorist, you may have been confronted with this kind of situation at one time or the other. In Nigeria, fuel queues are unheralded. They can happen at anytime – in the morning, afternoon or night. From observation, they usually spring up at night, making the motorist feel guilty, as he drives out the next morning, why he did not buy petrol the previous day when it was still easy to do so.

This is the pattern that fuel queues take whenever the commodity becomes scarce. When the problem arises, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, as it then was, blames it on “panic buying”. The longsuffering average Nigerian tags it “hoarding” or “artificial scarcity”. In both cases, the parties are saying the same thing that there is fuel, but they differ on why it is scarce. Why would the public resort to “panic buying” and the marketers to “hoarding” if the product is really available?

This has always been the question. But, as usual, there is nobody to answer it as those who should know resort to the blame game whenever fuel becomes scarce. Whether as Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation or as Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd, as it is now known under the soon to be suspended Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), nothing has changed in NNPC’s handling of the perennial fuel crisis. Nothing buttresses this fact more than the way it reacted to the current scarcity.

The shortage, is by no way, an happenstance. It was a problem waiting to happen because NNPC and its subsidiaries, especially, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroluem Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), were not proactive enough. NNPC has for sometime now been the sole importer of fuel since major marketers shunned the business because of the “stifling cost of operation”. Few weeks ago, it brought some consignments into the country, which turned out to be contaminated.

Did NNPC import a contaminated product? Or did the commodity get contaminated after landing in the country? Was there no quality control? How could the product have gone through the necessary checks without being discovered before its circulation? At what point did NNPC discover the contaminated fuel? Does it speak well of its control systems that such product could leave its or private depots without being discovered? When it knew about the problem, what steps did it take to prevent the present “artificial scarcity”? In fuel matters, the buck stops with NNPC.

This is why whenever there is a shortage, the public blames the organisation for the headache it is going through. Rather than relieve the people of their headache, NNPC resorted to misrepresenting facts about the matter. In its reaction on Monday, it hid the truth about the contaminated product, pretending to be unaware of the problem. Hear the firm: “The NNPC Ltd wishes to assure the public that the company has sufficient PMS stock to meet the needs of Nigerians.

“The public is, therefore, advised not to engage in panic buying of petrol; and to ignore all rumours that may suggest otherwise”. Could the public be said to have engaged in panic buying when only few outlets were selling the product? What should the motorists do in such a situation? Fold their arms and wait for petrol to, like Manna, fall from heaven? What “rumours” was NNPC referring to? Is it not true that there is contaminated fuel in circulation? Unfortunately, NNPC chose to beg rather than address the issue.

It took the statement by NMDPRA on Tuesday to show the lie in NNPC’s position. NMDPRA unequivocally blamed the scarcity on the discovery of “limited quantity of Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS), commonly known as petrol, with methanol quantities above Nigeria’s specification in the supply chain. To ensure vehicular and equipment safety, the limited quantity of the impacted product has been isolated and withdrawn from the market, including the loaded trucks in transit…Meanwhile, NNPC has intensified efforts at increasing the supply of petrol into the market to bridge any unforeseen supply gap”.

NNPC should have come clean with the public, just as NMDPRA did. As a limited liability company that it is now is, NNPC must realise that it can no longer be business as usual. It is no longer a government agency. A limited liability company is built on fiduciary trust and answerable to its shareholders and not the government. Why did it find it difficult to admit that contaminated product is in circulation? Such a product is harmful. It can cause a lot of damage to people’s health and vehicles. What happens to those who have suffered one damage or the other from the bad product?

Will they be compensated and by who? In these hard and lean times when people are striving to make ends meet, their problems should not be compounded by public or private organisations charged with the provision of services essential to their every day living. NNPC has failed its first test as a limited liability company. The morning, they say, shows the day. Is this how it will manage its operations under the new dispensation?

NNPC must buckle up now. The era when it was run like ‘no-man’s’ business is gone. It must realise that it is no longer a state agency, but a company that will soon go on public offer when the PIA is tidied up. Nobody will invest in it, if it still parades itself as an agency of government with little or no regard for business ethic.

In the meantime, NNPC can show that it is ready for life as a business entity by addressing the cry of independent marketers who are badly hit by the bad product. This bad product is not of their making and so, they should not be made to bear the brunt. They have incurred losses over the bad product which they could not sell and have been vicariously responsible for the damage done to their customers’ vehicles.

Compensating these motorists will not be out of place or they may decide to seek legal remedy, which would have been the option in saner climes. As for the Mele Kyari-led NNPC, it is not too late to redefine itself.

February 10, 2022
Pathfinder

The path to dystopia unfurls, in the end, as a hypnotic daydream. In Nigeria, it is the hovels we run into, to escape reality’s tedious pangs. We covet the distractions. We need them to mask our lives’ dissembling. Thus our retreat into a world of magic and lies. The type celebrated on TV breakfast shows, political and pornographic reality shows.

We live for illusions. We covet the spectacle of shadows cast on the walls of our minds, like the cave dwellers of Plato’s Republic. In The Republic, Socrates explains that the cave represents the world, the region of life which is revealed to us only through the sense of sight. The ascent out of the cave is the journey of the soul into the region of the intelligible, and it requires that the enlightened mind endures four stages of transformation.

The first involves his imprisonment in the cave; that is our fascination with materialism and our world of illusions. The second involves his release from chains; that is, our contact with the real, sensual world. Third, he makes his ascent out of the cave; that is, our flirtation with knowledge and the world of ideas. Fourth, he finds his way back into the cave to help his fellows while wrapped in a beam of light.

But what if the supposedly enlightened mind could only deign his fellow cave dwellers shiny, gray beams resonant of darkness? What if, like the sullied press, the shady revolutionary and corrupt oligarchs, he comes shining in brilliant spokes of ambiguity?

The process of progressing out of the cave is about getting educated and it is a difficult process requiring assistance and sometimes, force. This encapsulates the struggle involved in acquiring beneficial education or ridding a country of dark tyranny. The allegory of the cave intones our struggle to see the truth, to be critical thinkers.

Millions of Nigerian youths would resist the tyranny of the predatory ruling class if they weren’t enslaved to tokens. The struggle for freedom is often a painful experience. Dreams die and lives get lost as our heavily policed state flounder to insecurity and misgovernance.

The person who is leaving the cave is questioning his beliefs whereas the people in the cave simply accept what they are shown. They do not think about or question the veracity of doctored reality.

The allegory of the cave shows us the relation between education and truth, bondage and freedom. The battle for freedom and its sustenance is, however, best prosecuted by men and women of catholicity of will, higher learning, and culture. I speak of true patriots and statesmen, ambassadors of Nigerianness and native intelligence. Have we such patriots? Have we such men and women of deep culture?

The most pernicious aspect of our quandary is the disintegration of our cultural, moral complex. A land without both is dead to feeling; it becomes prone to rape and colonisation by cultural sovereigns.

The history of the world pulses with subtle and bodacious seizures of sovereignty by global ‘superpowers.’ The latter maintain dominance over the so-called ‘third world’ via cultural and political imperialism. The latter oft succeeds the former, where they aren’t launched from twin barrels of an imperialist shotgun.

While it is fool-hardy to categorise the world into first, second, and third worlds, such specious and flawed taxonomy of nations – perpetuated by the media, INGOs, and the academia – facilitates easier recolonisation of poorly governed, impoverished nations of Africa and the Middle East, by failing states spuriously depicted as shining lights of the ‘First World.’

Nations of the so-called ‘First World’ are nothing but varnished tombs of the imperial greatness they hitherto symbolised; scared by their imminent collapse, they craftily recolonise Africa, in particular – plundering her bowels to sustain their fading economies and social systems.

Having reclassified Africa as the ‘third world,’ they lay siege to the continent, plundering her resources; it’s a familiar plot in which Africans’ greed and ignorance lay the continent open to pillage and trans-generational slavery.

Nigeria’s lack of a humane, visionary leadership, for instance, makes her unbidden offering on an altar of imperialist vultures.

If truly we seek freedom, we must take purposive steps to unshackle ourselves from the leash of predatory oligarchs within, and the carnivore nations and international money lenders plundering our bowels from abroad.

Nigeria must rejig her cultural foundations and rebuild her moral complex. She must rise from her knees, and quit sucking the rusted end of the wrong spigot. The result of such endeavour would excite a social re-engineering built upon character mending, social and economic restoration in consonance with our peculiar strengths and weaknesses.

The result would be felt across several spheres of our existence. Restoring our cultural dominance in our own land would facilitate easier salvaging of our society, particularly the engine and wheels of our industrial complex.

China, Japan, Germany, Indonesia, Sweden, among others, attained shades of equilibrium and progress across crucial facets of their national lives by basing their governance styles on personalised pivots cum foundations of culture and traditions.

Nigeria, however, encounters her nemesis in materialism; the wild pursuit of status and money has destroyed our souls and our economy. The business and political elite comprising our bourgeois divide lives on ill-gotten wealth. Their survival, continued relevance – amid the chaos that our lives have become – is funded by stolen money and beastly monopolies facilitated by heinous social and political contracts.

The middle class fades into oblivion as boondocks families and the working class fight to maintain membership of informal social castes imposed upon them by a predatory political class.

The general run of the masses supposedly thinks and speaks, but many do so without any real awareness of the actuality of forms that define their existence. Plato’s allegory of the cave was meant to explain this. In the allegory, he likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. Plato’s allegory speaks to our individual and collective fate as a nation.

For Socrates, all virtues were forms of knowledge thus to train someone to manage a business account for PWC is to educate him or her in skill. To train them to debate the ethics of a business venture is to educate them on values and morals. A culture that disregards the vital interplay between morality and power writes Hedges, condemns itself to death.

Such existential truths are scorned by the modern fortune-hunter. This disconnect subsists across professions, government, and academia. Nigerian economists, for instance, chant elaborate theoretical models yet know little of how their fancy, soulless economics impacts rural poetry and suburban lives.

Our education and social systems must quit churning out such products of a cultural void, casualties of a system that produces graduates to serve the corrupted incumbent system; individuals who have been taught to cheat the system and applaud financial theft as a shrewd corporate strategy.

The true purpose of education must be to make minds, not social cannibals. It must be far removed from a system that bullies the populace to pacify and please authority.

It’s about time we identified the man who could lead Nigeria’s charge to rebirth. Who among the 2023 presidential aspirants contestants has proved his mettle in private and public service?

Whose antecedents excite the passionate tribute of a cheer? Whose past and present exploits incite the passing tribute of a sigh? Who’d be Nigeria’s pathfinder to greener pasture?

February 10, 2022
The Ethiopian crisis

Ethiopia, the most historically important country in Africa has been plagued by serious political crisis eventuating in cruel civil war in which Tigray, a rebellious state is fighting against the federal government of Ethiopia. Unfortunately, it is the common people of Ethiopia who are paying the price. Ethiopia is in the volatile Horn of Africa where people of different cultures are lumped together and where the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam were to be found in the past. Ethiopia is an ancient country that existed millennia before the birth of Christ. It was founded according to its myth of origin by King Menelik1, the son of Queen of Sheba and the Israeli King Solomon. Some part of it like Axum and Cush were well known in ancient times as centres of civilizations belonging to the same cultural area that produced the great civilization of Ancient Egypt.

In medieval Europe, the place used to be referred to as the land of Prester John, a mythical Christian king in Africa. The country before the disastrous attempted colonization by Italy which ended when Ethiopia inflicted a military defeat on Italy in 1896 was ruled by emperors descended from the Solomonic dynasty. This dynasty provided a rallying point for Ethiopia in times of foreign invasion or national implosion. In modern times, Emperor Haile Selassie who ruled as regent from 1916 to 1930 when he was Ras Tafari Makonnen and as emperor from 1930 to 1974 was able to mobilize his people to resist the forces of Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy in 1935 when he tried to wipe out the humiliation Italy suffered from the Ethiopian military defeat of Adowa in 1896. The free world aided the emperor who escaped to Britain but returned to the country in 1941. Since the end of the Second World war, the country has been held together in spite of the fissiparous tendencies pulling the country apart by the strong government provided by the emperor and after the emperor was overthrown in 1974, by the military which continued the era of strong central government.

The country has passed through various military governments which of course lacked the kind of legitimacy the Solomonic dynasty had. There was an attempt during the brutal rule of Colonel Haile Mariam Mengitsu from 1977 to 1991 to build a socialist ideology around the military regime when he was General Secretary of Ethiopian Workers Party. Many opponents were murdered and all opposition was suppressed. People’s homes were seized and given to the poor under the guise of proletarian revolution. Eventually the regime was toppled by the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and Mengitsu fled the country to Mugabe’s Harare and possibly now to South Africa for political asylum. After some period of instability, a democratic left wing government under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi from Tigray as leader of Tigray Peoples Liberation Front ( TPLF) was installed in 1991and 9191. He ruled the country with the traditional Ethiopian harsh rule brooking no opposition until he died in office in 2012. He introduced the idea of ethnic federalism into Ethiopia, an idea pregnant with future problems as we can see today. He brought a lot of economic development to the country and began building the mega dam on the White Nile whose origin is in Ethiopia with the idea of generating immense hydroelectric power to industrialize the country.

This great development plan could possibly bring Ethiopia into future war with Sudan and Egypt whose very lives depend on the uninterrupted flow of the Nile into their countries. It was during his regime that Eritrea which had been fighting to secede from Ethiopia was granted independence and the new Ethiopian constitution granted full autonomy to all the country’s provinces with the power to secede if any wanted to do so. Apparently, the framers of the constitution never imagined any group would like to take up the option. The secession of Eritrea, the former Italian colony from Ethiopia turned the country into a landlocked country with serious implication for its economic development because for years Ethiopia and Eritrea remained in state of belligerency. Ethiopia and Eritrea are peopled by same people separated by colonialism.

When Meles Zenawi died, he was succeeded by Hailemariam Desalegn Boshe who remained in office from 2012 to 2018. He came to office with great experience having served under Zenawi as deputy prime minister and also served as minister of foreign affairs. Like others before him, he faced the intractable problems of poverty, population explosion and unemployment .This has created a lot of dissatisfaction in the country and this problem was inherited by the current prime minister, Abiy Ahmed Ahmed, who came to office with a lot of promise of unity in diversity. Ethiopia is almost 60 % Christian and 40 % Muslim. Some writers claim that the Muslims are actually in the majority. Ahmed himself is of the Pentecostal Christian faith with an Oromo Muslim father and a Christian mother from the Amhara group. He therefore, represents an ecumenical factor in a highly religiously plural country. The complex religious situation of the country is illustrated by the fact that Haile Selassie became Regent in 1916 when the young emperor Lij Eyasu declared himself a Muslim and pledged allegiance to the Ottoman emperor, a tactical mistake in the time of the First World War which sealed his fate and he was never seen again and probably withered away in some prison in the country. A year after Abiy Ahmed came to office, the young prime minister signed a peace accord with Eritrea, ending the years of conflict with his neighbour. He also tried to bring unity among the usually quarrelsome Ethiopian people. For his efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace in 2019, which critics now say was rather premature.

The present crisis has some religious and ethnic undertones. The government of Tigray had locked horns with the federal government over electoral schedules. It went ahead to hold elections into its regional parliament in disregard of federal opposition to it. When challenged, it overran federal military depots in its region and this led to federal onslaught on it which initially succeeded to a point leading to hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring into neighbouring Sudan as well as creating hundreds of thousands of internally displaced poor Tigrayans. Most of the people in Tigray are orthodox Christians. Because at the heart of Tigray is ancient Cush and Axum an area with thousands of years of history dating to before the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. The federal forces were joined by forces from the Eritrean republic presenting a strange and unusual situation in which a neighbouring foreign country joins another country to levy war against a breakaway province. After suffering severe losses and wanton massacre of its people, the Tigrayans beat back both Federal Ethiopian forces and their Eritrean supporters who were apparently taking revenge on the Tigrayans who had fought them during their war with Ethiopia. It got to a point where the Tigrayans were at the gates of Addis Ababa with possible blood bath because Abiy Ahmed began to arm Ethiopians against the Tigrayans in what he called a patriotic war to save the country. Hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans living in Addis Ababa were arrested and interned or allegedly killed. This is where we are militarily and there has been intervention from the Western countries particularly the United States to mediate in the conflict. An African Union committee under former president Olusegun Obasanjo has mediated without success.

There is obviously no military solution to the problem because none of the combatants can win a clear victory. The country is in a strategic place in Africa close to the tinderbox of the Middle East and before one knows it, there will be foreign war merchants ready to sell weapons and to assist the two sides leading to much suffering of the poor people and destruction of ancient historic sites in the country. Africa has kept quiet watching from the sidelines when, if the spirit of NEPAD (New Partnership for African Development) we’re still alive, there ought to have been sent to Ethiopia before things got to this point an APRM (African Peer Review Mechanism) to warn the government of Ethiopia of the need to handle the situation with care rather than waiting for war to break out before constituting the Obasanjo Committee. Certainly the spirit of NEPAD should be kept alive by the AU Commission. It should not die with the exit from office of Olusegun Obasanjo and Thabo Mbeki!

The complexity of the Ethiopian problem needs to be tackled by friends of the country in Africa and we should not wait for the USA threatening to impose sanctions and cut off aid from the country before serious efforts to find a solution are put in place. African leaders should begin to take pre-crisis intervention measures in the continent before actual crisis ensues. If this had been done earlier on, we probably would not have had the military incursions in government in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea where leaders in the sub region watched a deteriorating situation without intervention until it exploded in predictable coup d’état. The spirit of self-examination that was embraced by the idea of APRM was to nip in the bud crisis before flowering into reality. It is not too late for an extraordinary meeting of the African Union to be summoned to Addis Ababa to impress on the government of Ethiopia that the AU cannot continue to be headquartered in a war-torn country and that a government of national unity must be formed to save the country and Africa from embarrassment.

February 10, 2022
Boy apocalypse

There is an apocalyptic drift to the scourge of minors – mainly boys – who have laid siege to Nigeria’s suburbs and rural areas. They are not only looking to make a quick buck, many of them are seeking to become filthy rich, in the blink of an eye.

The viral video of three teenagers looking to learn internet fraud aka ‘Yahoo Yahoo’ in Edo State is the latest in a slew of horrors haunting the Nigerian landscape.

In the two-minute video, the boys, between ages 14 and 15, appeared stranded as they told an interrogator in pidgin: “We wan come hustle.” Their preferred hustle, they revealed, is the “Yahoo hustle…”

At further probe, they reaffirmed their initial claim, stressing, “…but not Yahoo plus.”

It’s only a matter of time before they prowled the bloodied boulevard of “Yahoo Plus,” like the quartet: Wariz Oladehinde, 17, Majekodunmi Soliu, 18, Abdul Gafar Lukman 19, and Mustakeem Balogun 20, who were arrested in the early hours of Saturday, January 29 by men of Ogun State Police Command for allegedly killing a girlfriend of their friend for money-making ritual. The boys were arrested following a report at the Adatan divisional headquarters by a security guard, that the suspects were seen burning something suspected to be a human head in a clay pot.

On interrogation, the arrested suspects confessed that what they were burning in the clay pot is the severed head of the girlfriend of their accomplice.

Few days earlier, the Bayelsa trio: Emomotimi,15, Perebi, 15, and Eke, 15. The boys and natives of Sagbama in Bayelsa, allegedly accosted one 13-year-old, “hypnotized” her, and led her to Emomotimi’s apartment. There, they reportedly cut her finger and sprinkled her blood on a mirror for money-making ritual. But for vigilant village youths, Comfort would have been history, perhaps.

Charms were recovered from the teenagers, who confessed to the crime, according to the spokesman of the Bayelsa State Police Command, Superintendent Asinim Butswat.

The pagan dialectic of the teenagers’ ritual misadventure is sweepingly comprehensive and accurate about Nigerian mind and nature. The boys are the products of a culture and value system fostered by materialism, and lacking in compassion and model filial ties.

Nigeria’s intelligentsia, civil societies, and political class, however, perceive them as fractions of the country’s disposable human trash. They believe that there are more pressing political and economic problems to address. This is a mistake. A grievous one.

These boy ritualists, like the boy bandits and insurgents prowling Nigeria’s northeast and northwest, constitute our reality check; the frightful glimpse into our infernal core.

They are products of Nigeria’s dysfunctional system. Inured to mayhem, they are forbiddingly dangerous. Their personalities, shaved of compassion are sculpted to project strife by innate lust and their maleficent benefactors.

Brainwashed, they become puppet personae, stunted in growth, and unquestioning of their puppeteers’ malicious intent.

Amid their benefactors’ toxic patronage, they manifest like soulless dummies, casual workers in a Nigerian carnage factory.

s victims and villains, they are exposed and enclosed, behind their coarse faces and masks.

Each boy is naked yet armoured, premature yet ritually experient. They are impervious to morals because they have become soulless; their defiled innocence screams for urgent help and yet remains closed to redemption.

Their naivete is deceptive – not to be toyed with. Collectively, their fates resonate a tragedy so intense it manifests as a protracted wail. Before many of them fell in love with fast money, bullets, and guns, they probably had dreams, like any normal child their age. In Zamfara, 17-year-old Aliyu, told me that he dreamt of being “a very big rice farmer.”

But he embraced banditry and strife, and his life transformed into a constant blur of anti-bullet charms, AK-47s, mindless rape, and bloody raids on defenseless villages.

Lest we forget the teen gangs of Lagos, including the One Million Boys, Fadeyi Boys, Ereko Boys, Akala Boys, Awala Boys, Shitta Boys, No Salary Boys, No Mercy Boys, Aguda Boys, Black Scorpion, Red Scorpion, Akamo Boys, Omo Kasari Confraternity, Japa Boys, Koko Boys, and the much dreaded Awawa Boys.

What started innocently as groups of minors begging people for money eventually metamorphosed into gangs of fearsome teenage cultists, rapists, and armed robbers terrorising Agege, Iyana-Ipaja, Sakamori, Ibari, Ashade, Dopemu, Ogba, Ifako-Ijaiye, Abule-Egba, Ifako-Ijaye, Agege, Isale Oja, Ibari, Akerele, Papa Ogba Ashade, Aluminium Village, Ibeju Lekki, Ajah and other parts of Lagos Island.

They rob with guns, machetes, daggers, and weaponised cutlery, forks in particular. They also rape young girls and women. Most of the gangs nurse a morbid fascination for raping women old enough to be their mothers and young girls.

Rape is a crucial part of their initiation rites. It helps to groom fearlessness in even the youngest member. Prospective initiates are ordered to rape a certain number of girls or a particular woman they intend to shame.

Several women have been raped on their way to and from work by those boys in parts of Pen Cinema in Agege, but victims have learnt to keep quiet, hiding their pain for fear of being stigmatised by their communities and loved ones.

Though predominantly a cult of boys, females including prepubescent girls are recruited into these gangs too. They move in pretty large squads and pride themselves in their numbers. Often times they operate as a flash mob of close between 100 and 150 but for smaller missions, they move in squads of between 20 and 50 boys and girls. Sometimes, they operate in rag-tag squads of four, five, seven, 10 to 15 boys bearing deadly arms including baseball bats, clubs, meat cleavers, daggers, crude metal bars, ‘two by two’ (wooden planks with nails), and forks.

Members of the cult are drug dependent. They binge on psychotropic substances including omi gota (gutter juice), colorado, pamilerin, codeine, cannabis, rohypnol, and tramadol.

Just recently rival gangs terrorised Agege in a protracted turf war that lasted almost one week. After establishing their dominance in any neighbourhood, they engage in a peculiar brand of hustle by which they perpetrate scams, bullying, political violence, and armed robberies.

Several gangs are linked to criminal operations across Lagos. They commit house burglaries and armed robberies and the stolen valuables are often sold at ridiculous prices.

These gangs are composed of mainly young males, aged seven to 25 years. Despite their dangerous proclivities, they provide young people with a sense of belonging and social identity, and as they operate in shadow economies, they make up for the lack of educational and job opportunities afflicting young boys.

Within gangs, young boys have found camaraderie and a way to make a living. Many of them commit serious crimes such as robbery and burglary with the intention of exchanging stolen goods for cash. The money earned from such crimes is invested in hard drugs, commercial sex workers, gambling, and other guilty pleasures.

In Lagos, many gang members and area boys act as violent brokers in parallel structures, having created an income for themselves via forced extortion and narcotics peddling, playing guard of individual property, or public space in situations of inadequate or ineffective police presence.

Over time, they have become an accepted part of the urban landscape even as they become mercenaries for various forms of political, ethnic, and religious criminal contracts in the process.

A more worrisome reality, however, is the increasing fascination among gang members with the ‘money ritual.’

February 3, 2022
May your loyalty be tested

Works Minister Babatunde Fashola was put to the strictest test of his loyalty when he appeared before the Senate for screening sometime in October 2015. The question came out of the blue from a senator who wanted to know how loyal he would be in the discharge of his duties to the nation.

The senator’s question was borne out of Fashola’s relationship with his principal and former Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu, who he succeeded in 2007. Somewhere, along the line, their relationship was said to have become strained. These things tend to happen in politics. The best of friends become estranged and the mentor and his mentee become sworn enemies in the contest for power.

Till today, nobody can pinpoint what happened between Tinubu and Fashola during the latter’s tenure in office which gave rise to the rumours that he may not be given a second term ticket. ‘Haaa… have you heard, there is no second term for Fashola. Baba has said so’, the rumour-peddlers went to town, telling whoever cared to listen. Mostly, they spoke in Yoruba as they tried to give what they considered a ‘vivid account’ of the backroom intrigues that may deny Fashola a second term ticket.

Despite everything, Fashola did his constitutionally guaranteed two terms as governor and has been a minister in Abuja since leaving the executive mansion in Lagos in 2015. The senator who asked him the question on loyalty wanted to know the story, if any, of what transpired behind closed doors between Fashola and Tinubu to determine his suitability for the ministerial job which includes keeping ‘secrets secret’. He wanted to know if Fashola could be trusted not to reveal too much when the chips are down. If you are disloyal then you can be anything, the senator must have reasoned.

Fashola, like the lawyer he is, skirted round the issue. He denied his interrogators the joy of knowing what they had preened their ears to hear of his relationship with Tinubu. ‘All I will say is that may our loyalty never be tested’, he cleverly said to the consternation of the senators who were waiting to hear from the horse’s mouth the untold story of his ‘turbulent’ days in power and encounters with his predecessor.

Is it possible for a man’s loyalty not to be tested one way or the other in life? We face the loyalty test virtually everyday. As a spouse, we face the test; as a worker, we face the test; as a parent, we face the test; as a student, we face the test; as a sports person, we face the test; as a child, we face the test; as a disciple, we face the test.

Anywhere we turn, we face the loyalty test. But in politics, the test is a big deal. It is the ultimate test. You are either loyal or not, that is you are either for those who made you or you are against them. So, it is not a curse to tell a politician or anybody for that matter that ‘may your loyalty be tested’. It is to prepare that person for the day he will face such a tricky situation. It happened to Peter despite being forewarned by Jesus. As Tai Solarin noted in his 1964 New Year letter to the nation: ‘May your road be rough’, it is not a curse to send a friend, family member or a loved one such a message, it is to prepare them for the tough journey ahead.

Read Also: Who is Bola Ahmed Tinubu?

In politics, a protege must remain loyal to his master, till death do them part. So, he must protect the interest of the master, come rain, come shine. In political circles, he must forever be beholden to the master, who is seen as his godfather. Things may end up not working that way. The reason for this is obvious: power. After coming into power, the protege perceives himself as equal to his master. He places himself on the same pedestal with the godfather.

His hangers-on do not help matters. They goad him on, saying with the power at his disposal, there is nothing he cannot do, including taking on the one who made him. Some public officials are at that juncture of their political life now. Tinubu’s decision to run for the 2023 presidential election has altered the political equation. Some of his loyalists are also interested in the race. Names have been mentioned, but, unlike him, none of these persons has publicly spoken about their ambition.

Tinubu’s entry into the race may have put them in a tight corner. What do we do now that Oga has made his intention known? Do we go into a contest with him for the presidential ticket of our party, the All Progressives Congress (APC)? As they ponder these questions, their aides are busy doing all the dirty job for them. Tinubu is being attacked right, left and centre, with the hack writers, giving reasons why the former governor should not be president.

The disturbing thing is that many of these people used to be Tinubu’s right-hand men too. When did they know that Tinubu is not a leader to be associated with? Should who become president cause a rift between Tinubu and his loyalists? Has Tinubu done anything wrong by deciding to run for President? The fear of Tinubu is the cause of their panic. They know that with the Asiwaju of Lagos in the race, it will be difficult selling their man to the party.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is a well known Tinubu man. Although, he has not said anything about his presidential ambition, the portent shows otherwise. Should he run or not? How should he go about it? With Tinubu in the race, should he also contest? I do not know what is going on in Osinbajo’s mind, but from goings-on around him, it is safe to say that he is interested in the presidential race. I will not be surprised if he comes out to say so. That is his right.

With the media adverts and the children, who carried placards when he visited Katsina last weekend, urging him to run, Osinbajo may be set for the contest of his life. This is his own test of loyalty. Will he pass? As a pastor, he knows the story about Jesus’ test of faith in the wilderness after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, will he act Christ-like in handling this loyalty test?

Our loyalty, which is not only to God, but also man will always be tested. It is how we handle the test that distinguishes the strong from the weak. At the end of the day, we will all answer our father’s name and not that of those asking us to keep on dancing as they are behind us.

February 3, 2022