Last week, this column intervened in the ongoing ASUU strike under the rubric of ASUU’S Stroke, in which it called on ASUU to call off the strike in the interest of the health of the public universities which have tragically been under lock for more than six months, and ASUU members, who have not been paid their salaries for months. Since that intervention, the new buzz is that the federal government will implement the law on “no work, no pay,” hence another immediate intervention.

The “no work no pay” law is provided by Section 43(1)(a) of the Trade Disputes Act, 1976. It provides: “Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act or in any other law-(a) where any worker takes part in a strike, he shall not be entitled to any wages or other remuneration for the period of the strike, and any such period shall not count for the purpose of reckoning the period of continuous employment and all rights dependent on continuity of employment shall be prejudicially affected accordingly.”

If the above law is strictly applied, members of ASUU would not be entitled to salaries for the more than six months they have been on strike, and the period would be discountenanced from the period of service, with so many other consequences, almost ad infinitum. As a countermeasure, ASUU has also given notice that if the “no work no pay” policy is implemented, they would also not deal with any outstanding academic work arising during the period of strike.

By implication, ASUU said they would ignore pending students’ work for that period, including outstanding examinations and unmarked scripts. They would also discountenance teaching outstanding courses, and doubling down on lectures, to make up for the lost time. ASUU members would also discountenance the pending admissions, even as another batch of students would sit for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), early next year. In fact, they threatened that final year students who are on the verge of graduation would suffer the consequences of the policy, as well.

The diatribe has developed into a ‘tit for tat,’ and like the proverbial statement, ‘where two elephants fight, the grass suffers.’ In this instance, while the nation is paying a huge cost for the dislocation of the academic year of majority of her public universities, it is students that are suffering immeasurably in the fight between the federal government and ASUU. It is better imagined what would happen to the thousands of students who would be further dislocated by ASUU’s recent threat, and many of them could derail permanently.

In the contest for public sympathy, the federal government seems to be having an upper hand. Many have erroneously believed the false tale by the Minister of Education Mallam Adamu Adamu that all the demands of ASUU have been met, and the only outstanding issue is the payment of outstanding salary for the strike period. It has since come out that what the federal government offered were mere promissory notes that it would implement the demands next year, which ASUU has said is no different from what has been happening since the 2019 agreement was reached.

Just like his predecessors, the Buhari government has refused to implement the Memorandum of Agreement reached with ASUU. Prior to the 2019 agreement, there were those of 2009 and 2017, and the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding. Each of them never translated to terms of contract of employment, and as such remain unenforceable, except as it pleases the federal government. As stated by the Court of Appeal in Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation vs Obaende (2002) F.W.L.R. Pt. 116, pg. 944: “The enforceability of collective agreement is by agreement. Collective agreements, except where they have been adopted as forming part of the terms of employment, are not enforceable. The enforcement of such an agreement is by negotiation between the parties.”

According to ASUU, the federal government has even refused to sign any formal binding agreement with the union, beyond the Memorandum of Understanding, which is unenforceable. Again, in U.M.T.H.M.B vs Dawa (2002) F.W.L.R. Pt. 108, pg. 1419, the Court of Appeal held: “Where there is a written contract, it is to it the court must look for its terms and status of the parties. The duty of the court is to confine itself to the clear provisions and give effect to contracts freely entered into by parties.”

The present government, just like their predecessors, treats the collective agreement with ASUU with levity. While giving the impression to members of the public that negotiations are going on between her officials and ASUU, the refusal of the officials to sign such an agreement when negotiations end, shows that the federal government’s representatives merely use the negotiations to buy time. Yet collective agreement is fundamental in labour laws. As explicitly stated by learned author E. E. Uvieghara in his book, Labour Law in Nigeria: “Collective agreement constitutes a very important source of the terms and conditions of employment. Many important terms and conditions of employment are today determined by collective bargaining and reflected in collective agreements.”

Unfortunately, for ASUU, and the groaning students and their parents, they are dealing with lackadaisical government officials, who do not give a damn about the consequences of the long strike. On her part, ASUU is miscalculating that if they keep the strike on, public pressure would make the federal government buckle. To compound the matter for ASUU, the officials of President Mohammadu Buhari’s administration, like their predecessors, have reduced the crisis to a media war with ASUU, an area they have the upper hand.

The officials now seem to believe that what the federal government needs to do is win public sympathy against ASUU, and the blame will shift to ASUU. So, instead of getting alarmed about the threat from ASUU, to engage in a tit for tat, the federal government officials are using the threats by ASUU as an instrument of blackmail. And while the tango between ASUU and the federal government goes on, the clock on Buhari’s government slowly winds down.

Again, this column advises ASUU that it cannot get what they deserve from the departing government of Buhari.

While this column has sympathy for ASUU, the effects of the strike on the students are far-reaching. ASUU must also bear in mind that with the prevailing economic adversity and the contradictory proliferation of federal universities, what her members, particularly the upper echelon deserve, is presently unsustainable. Perhaps, a decentralised university system, with each employing and paying what it can afford, instead of a unitary unrealistic salary structure may be the way forward. The strike conundrum cannot be solved by the “no-work-no-pay” scarecrow, and definitely not by an unending strike.

This column had waited on the outcome of the meeting of the National Executive Council (NEC) of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), held on Sunday night. As it was being concluded Monday morning, the news filtered out that the prolonged strike by federal and some state universities had been further extended, as ASUU rejected the terms offered by the federal government. Unfortunately, that decision will further exacerbate the impact of the strike on the health of the university community and parents of university students.

Of course, members of the federal executive and their media howitzers whose wards are unaffected by the strike and who care less about the academic trajectory of the nation’s universities, make mockery of the monumental crisis afflicting our university education. Some are not perturbed by the fundamental issues that ASUU raises preceding each strike. Such commentators are indifferent when ASUU compares funding for universities with other sectors and the salaries earned by their contemporaries in other climes.

This column had thought that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, which at its beginning was projected as a disciplined and firm administration, would tackle the ASUU crisis once and for all times. But like its predecessors, ASUU strikes have remained a regular decimal of its tenure. According to some accounts, in 23 years (1999-2022), ASUU has cumulatively been on strike for nearly four years. The present strike has clocked six months, and would be journeying into the seventh.

What a tragedy for a nation whose development index is amongst the most afflicted laggards of the world. According to some accounts, our country has taken either gold or silver as the poverty capital of the world since 2016, and those who should know are not making any connection between our development trajectory and the maltreatment of our education sector. According to the World Poverty Clock, over 70 million Nigerians are currently living in extreme poverty, which is about 33 percent of the country’s estimated population at 215,353,968.

If those in power at various levels of government care about the basic essence of governance, they would use education to help Nigerians escape extreme poverty. They would also understand the intricate connection between education and insecurity, which explains why the Boko Haram’s protagonists are doing everything they can to make education a haram. For the radical theology of such a group can only thrive where the people are ignorant. So, if those in power care, their strategy should be to use education to chase away poverty and insecurity.

The national discourse on university education should therefore be the quantum of resources the nation needs to pour into it, and where will such resources come from? Furthermore, what value should the nation gain from such investment, and what needs to be done to ensure a higher yield or return on investment for the country, amongst other interests? Since all are agreed the universities are poorly funded, the federal government, since 1999, should have negotiated implementable solutions to the challenge.

So, on the first point, the national discourse should be how much percentage of the national budget should be earmarked for education, and where would the balance of the resources needed come from? By every standard, the budgetary allocation to the universities by their owners are inadequate, whether for research, salaries and emoluments or infrastructure development. Unfortunately, while the federal government claims that it doesn’t have enough resources, there is clear evidence of waste, particularly in the direction of corrupt practices.

Even more unfortunately, the Buhari government, against expectations, has glaringly not curbed corruption in the application of public finances. So, while truly the nation may not have enough resources to meet all the ASUU demands, ASUU is belligerent because, like the rest of other Nigerians outside the government, it sees corruption and waste everywhere. It also sees insensitivity and dishonesty on the part of those given the mandate by the president to negotiate with them.

To assuage ASUU, the federal and state governments should empanel trusted Nigerians to broker the way forward for our universities. One of the issues for public discussion should be the introduction of enhanced fees for university education. The ongoing pretence that federal university education is free needs a robust review. While this column does not advocate payment of full- fledged fees for university education, free tuition fee university education is unrealistic with the current state of the national economy.

But to gain the support of Nigerians, university administrators would have to learn or be compelled to be more transparent in managing the available resources. The clamour by striking members of ASUU for the federal government to empanel Visitation Panels for universities is because of perceived corruption by the administrators. Again, if there is transparency, the clamour for autonomy would gain more traction, and even the use of the disputed UTAS payment system would be less acrimonious.

Unfortunately, with corruption permissive within the government circles and university administration, ASUU operates precariously between the devil and the deep sea. But the solution to the quagmire lies with the federal government, and until they rein in corruption in government and in the universities, its little effort would be dissipated. If the federal government deals with corrupt practices in the universities, and pushes more resources into the sector, a lot of the factors underpinning the perennial crisis will disappear.

Another issue that should worry both the government and members of ASUU is whether the curriculum of the universities is for 21st century learning. The present emphasis on teaching theories instead of application of theories is at the root of the minimal impact of university education in the development trajectory of the country. Going forward, Nigerian universities should be structured to solve developmental challenges of the country, instead of handing out certificates to graduates who queue up for the unavailable white-collar jobs.

Should university education produce more productive graduates, the GDP of the country would increase, and unemployment will reduce. Universities should, therefore, be incubators of ideas, programmes, projects and products, for the betterment of Nigeria. Research grants and funding from private sectors would also increase if the universities become incubation centres for entrepreneurship. The federal and state governments should also be more interested in competence in the selection of university administrators, rather than the trending ‘man know man syndrome.’

In the meantime, the six-month-old strike should be called off by ASUU, regardless of the terms on offer from the federal government, and ASUU’s gunpowder kept dry for the incoming administration. To continue the strike under an indifferent outgoing government, is to transmute the ASUU strike to ASUU stroke, that tragic health challenge that could become the lot of the unpaid ASUU members, and some parents whose wards have become perennial undergraduates.

Fortuitously, the organisers of the unveiling of the new Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) in Abuja the penultimate Tuesday, invited the multiple award-winning singer, guitarist, and international music star Bukola Elemide popularly known as Asa, to entertain guests at the event graced by President Muhammadu Buhari, who doubles as the Minister for Petroleum Resources. Perhaps to the chagrin of those who invited her, she choose to perform her prophetic classic, Fire on the mountain, before a traumatised president and his audience.

It is possible that as Asa sang the song, the president and other distinguished guests were furtively looking over their shoulders to see whether the emboldened miscreants who has threatened to kidnap the president and Governor El Rufai would burst into the arena to carry out their threat. To make Asa even more prophetic in this scary times, terrorists a few days after her performance rained fire from Zuma rock against a military checkpoint. But unlike in Asa’s lyrics, there is fire on the mountain and everyone is on the run.

Same last week, members of the National Assembly hurriedly adjourned plenary until September. In their muted contributions before the adjournment, most of them showed they were scared to their bones that the terrorists they thought had been restrained to the countryside may have infiltrated their Abuja hideout. In panic members of the opposition in the senate railed at President Buhari for the state of insecurity and threatened to impeach him, if by the time they return from their six weeks recess, the insecurity persists.

Their colleagues in the House of Representatives also quickly held a press conference to show solidarity with the threat by the senators, before hurriedly adjourning. The minority leader, Ndudi Elumelu gushed out that his colleagues should leave Abuja as quickly as possible. In his support of the motion to adjourn, he said: “However, I want to beg members, Abuja is no longer safe, please, if possible, go back to your constituency. The place is so insecure.”

Despite the lame attempts of the Deputy Speaker Ahmed Wase to dismiss the observation as a joke, the challenges of the capital city in the past few weeks, show that there is serious fire on the mountain in the federal capital territory. Few days ago, three soldiers from the elite Brigade of Guards were killed in an ambush by terrorists. Some claimed the terrorists were aiming at the Nigerian Law School, Bwari, and out of fear, the Federal Government College, Kwali, was hurriedly closed down.

Meanwhile conspiracy theorists who had predicted that there is a grand plan to hand Nigeria over to extremist Islamists, are honking their megaphones that the government of President Buhari is moving according to that plan. Even scarier is that while those kidnapped by Boko Haram are still held under their suzerainty, with huge ransoms demanded, Boko Haram captives jailed in various correctional centres have been forcefully released through jail breaks. The latest of such breaks happened in Kuje, Abuja, with relevant authorities telling tales by the moonlight.

To make matters bizarre, a presidential spokesman was reported to have asked the media to take over the battle against the terrorists, since the president is doing his best. Unfortunately his best has not resulted in the release or rescue of the kidnapped victims of the Abuja-Kaduna train, neither has it resulted in the re-arrest of the Boko Haram terrorists that escaped from the Kuje prison. It has not also led to the rescue of the numerous school girls kidnapped and married or sold off as the terrorists have boasted.

As if to give credence to the conspiracy theories, the alarm raised severally by the governor of Niger State, Abubakar Sanni Bello in the past one year that Boko Haram and their affiliates have taken over several forests in his state and could attack Abuja from there were ignored. There are also stories in the media that there were several intelligence reports that the Kuje correctional facility would be attacked, which were ignored. And despite these breaches, nobody has been punished or even indicted for this national embarrassment.

Emboldened by the increasing disability of the state to get its acts together, the terrorists have now threatened to kidnap the president and governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El Rufai. In a flurry of activities since that threat, the president and members of House of Representatives have held consultations with security chiefs, and there have been redeployments of GOCs and Brigade Commanders amongst others. Whether those redeployments would make any difference is in the womb of time.

On his part, the governor of Kaduna State has reiterated his call for carpet bombing of the forests to eliminate the terrorists. He is of the view that the federal government is not doing enough to deal with the challenges from the terrorists. And despite El Rufai’s touted closeness to the Buhari presidency, his advice is ignored or perhaps it is militarily unreasonable. Again, the governor with his colleagues in the northwest have tried different kinds of the carrot and stick approach with little success.

As things stand, most of the vast forests stretching from the north-central states to the northwest states have been taken over by the bandits with our security forces appearing helpless in the circumstance. But for the introduction of Amotekun security corps by the states in the southwest, similar fate would have befallen the forests stretching from Oyo to Ondo and Ekiti State. And despite the best efforts of the regional outfit, there are still breaches as we witnessed in Ondo State recently.

The southeast would also have been completely taken over, if not the self-help efforts of the people of the region. But for the efforts of the state governments and self-determination groups, the criminals would have taken over the region; even though there are still breaches occasionally. Unfortunately indigenous renegade groups in the region have allegedly taken advantage of the crisis to kidnap for ransom, are there is a blur between external and local organised criminality in the region.

The south-south is not exempted from the terrorist activities of the insurgents. There are fears that the insurgents are entrenched in the Edo and Delta forests, and even in Cross River and Akwa Ibom states. Of course, the entire northeast has remained a hotbed of Boko Haram criminality since President Goodluck Jonathan’s era. So, when conspiracy theorists project that there are plans to forcefully take over Nigeria, many believe them.

With President Buhari announcing to the nation that he is exhausted and is in a haste to leave office, one wonders who would douse the raging fire on the mountain. If President Buhari is tired of fighting the fire, he should honourably resign.

With the federal and Imo State governments showing lack of capacity to protect lives and properties of the residents of Imo State, perhaps it is time for the people to turn to God for divine intervention. Otherwise, what can the people of the state do when those that hold the levers of power have become clueless in the midst of mass murder of unarmed citizens by bandits and so-called agents of the state?

The most recent of such gruesome mass murders took place in Awomama, Orlu Imo State. Indeed, according to a human rights organisation, International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), between 800 to 900 citizens of Imo State have been killed under the watch of the government of Hope Uzodimma. While it may be preposterous to blame the governor exclusively for the killings, considering the constitutional challenges faced by governors on security, that report should alarm the governor.

According to Intersociety, those killed in Awomama were wedding guests returning from a weeding. In their report, they named the wedded couple, the place of the wedding, their family and villages, the persons killed, those fatally wounded, those missing and those arrested. Yet, in the account of the governor, those killed were dreaded terrorists killing and maiming residents of the state. While the governor claims it was the DSS on security mission that killed the criminals, the people claimed Ebubeagu security men killed guests returning from a wedding.

Such a controversy under the nose of the state governor is outrageous and disheartening. As far as the people of Awomama are concerned, the governor is lying and is propagating a false claim by the DSS that those killed were criminals. This column supports the call for an independent inquiry to unearth what happened in Awomama, Imo State. The state government should be interested in such public inquiry, unless it has something to hide. If it doesn’t, the governor should immediately convene a judicial panel of clearly independent persons to find out what happened.

The governor has nothing to lose if the information given to him by the security agencies turns out to be false but he has everything to lose if he allows the controversy to linger for the rest of his tenure. He should know by now that the controversy will not go away; rather it will mutate into all manner of conspiracy theories most of which would revolve around his person. The leadership of DSS must also set up an administrative inquiry to determine whether her officials in the state are telling the truth, or involved in the alleged cover-up.

If the leadership of the DSS is unwilling to take such steps, the president must show interest and invite the Attorney General of the Federation to institute an inquiry into the activities of the state DSS and the findings sent to the president and subsequently made public. Under the watch of President Muhammadu Buhari, there have been too many killings by armed terrorists and bandits, and a state institution like the DSS should not be associated with such mass murders, or cover-up as claimed by the people.

It should also worry the state government that the people of the state are pointing accusing fingers against Ebubeagu, set-up to deal with security challenges occasioned by armed insurgency by foreign elements that attack people in the region. If the allegations are true, then it means that a security outfit set up to protect the people from external aggressors has become the problem of the people. If the allegations are true, then the fish is rotten from the head.

It is such belief that the state is unwilling to save the people that made them to go into the streets to demonstrate. If those gruesome killings were truly carried out by Ebubeagu security men, then Imo State has given a bad publicity to the call for state police. As part of the answer to the insecurity that has befallen our dear country, there are stringent calls for state police, and the security outfits operating in the regions are supposed to be a model of what the state police would look like.

Perhaps, the controversy surrounding the emergence of Governor Uzodimma, may be part of his challenges in governance. For many in the state, the governor remains a usurper despite the judgment of the Supreme Court, upon which he became the governor, instead of Emeka Ihedioha, sworn in as the winner of the state governorship election in 2019. So, could the deteriorating security situation in the state be caused by those opposed to his government, as he has claimed?

Even if that claim is true, it is expected that after being in charge of the state for about two years and six months, the governor should have found a way to deal with the fall-out of his controversial emergence as state governor. To keep blaming political opponents while the state he governs is deteriorating into a state of anarchy is unacceptable. Indeed, despite the usual promises to expose those behind the perennial killings in the state, nothing of such has happened. And naming political opponents is not enough; the governor should ensure that any person involved in the prevalent mayhem faces the law.

To do otherwise is to court the acronym of cluelessness. This column also urges Igbo leaders to examine the possibility of mediating the crisis between state actors and non-state actors in the state. Without prejudice to the right of the security agencies to deal with any acts of outright criminality in the state, there is no doubt that the emergence of Uzodimma generated a lot of political tension that have affected social stability in the state. Such social tension can be doused by such intervention, while dealing with criminality is left in the hands of security agencies.

The incremental descent into anarchy in Imo State, also calls for prayers. For while the Book of James 2:26 says: “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead”, the Psalmist on its part in Chapter 127:2 notes: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain; if the Lord does not guard the city, the watchman watches in vain.” For this column, whatever can be legitimately done to bring peace to Imo State should be done.

Those in government have the responsibility to protect lives and property and they should brace up to their responsibility. In case they have forgotten, section 14(2)(b) of the 1999 constitution provides that: “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” Governor Hope Uzodimma, and President Muhammadu Buhari owe the people of Imo that even as they seek God’s intervention.

Nigeria is incrementally moving towards a cliff in the competition for power, thanks to the most pathetic in-your-face excesses of President Muhammadu Buhari’s government, and the peripheral religious-gaming of his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. With the 2023 general election in sight, religion as a major factor in national politics is mutating into a hydra-headed monster that may consume Nigeria faster than the ethnic politics that has plagued her since the advent of self-rule.

It is religion in politics or the politics of religion that is referenced as religio-politics, while of course ethnic or regional politics is geopolitics. Unarguably, religion plays a significant part in politics across the world, and Nigeria cannot be an exception. After all, the clatter between Islam and Christianity is regarded as the clash of civilization, and we see the impact in the contest for influence across the third world, and between western civilisation and her Islamic neighbours.

The attack on the United States of America on September 11, 2001, by extremist Islamic elements, which shook the entire western world, is seen as a militant manifestation of that clash. Even the Afghanistan war and the many instances of terrorism by extreme Islamic elements that plague the western world, is seen as continuation of the debacle. But in Nigeria, while accusation of religious persecution has always been a factor, especially in the north-central, religious demagoguery was not always trumpeted in selecting presidential candidates.

So, what could be responsible for the massive hoopla by Christian religious leaders against the choice of Senator Kashim Shettima, a northern Muslim, as the vice presidential candidate of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of the All Progressive Congress (APC), a southern Muslim. This is despite the manifest secularism of the presidential candidate, proved beyond reasonable doubt by his happy marriage to a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Senator Oluremi Tinubu. Again, this is despite decades of secularist practices which Asiwaju has been associated with.

Could it be the fear that the APC stands a great chance to win the presidential election, considering Asiwaju’s political sagacity and the extensive spread of his party, the APC that many Christian religious leaders are stringently railing at what has been termed a Muslim-Muslim ticket? Maybe. But for many, a strong contributory factor to the hysteria is the extreme manifestation of religious and ethnic bias by the Buhari presidency. This resort to manifest religious favouritism tamely started by President Jonathan assumed an epidemic proportion under Buhari.

Perhaps it is the burden of those recent religious trajectory in national politics that the presidential candidate of the APC has been destined to carry as he climbs the presidential mountain. As I have written previously on this page, the greatest undoing of the tenure of President Buhari’s, is his lackadaisical handling of the menace of the insurgency by the militant Fulani herdsmen, in the north-central and southern part of the country. Unfortunately, many see him in religious and ethnic garb, for condoning the dangerous excesses of the herdsmen.

So, that is why the menace of the herdsmen has been interpreted by many as part of an Islamization and/or Fulanization agenda, with both terms being interchanged without much interrogation. Even the highly regarded former President Olusegun Obasanjo made that allegation, and so every political decision of President Buhari, particularly his appointments of security chiefs, has been interpreted in shadow of religiosity/ethnicity. To further compound the unfolding tragedy, President Buhari damned the constitutional demand for spread in those appointments, as if to give credence to the alleged agenda.

But while Buhari raised the ante of religion in politics to the present dangerous level, it was President Jonathan that made religion a part of statecraft. How can we forget the peacock entrails of Pastor Ayo Oritsajafor and his Christian associates milking their closeness to a Christian President Goodluck Jonathan? Sadly, there is no interrogation whether those manifestations were borne out of incompetence and the lack of rigour in the quality of decisions by the two presidents. For while President Obasanjo may act more religious that the two, he knew when to call the bluff of the Christian Association of Nigeria as soon as their handshake was moving towards the elbow.

Tragically for President Buhari, his inept handling of the herdsmen crisis will define his tour of duty in the Nigerian presidency, and not the bridges, railways, roads and new universities that his media handlers wish should. Even the insecurity in the country that is far bigger than the herdsmen’s crisis, and which is afflicting several parts of the sub-Sahara Africa, has been interpreted as part of the larger Fulani agenda, because the president had treated a boil so lackadaisically that it has become cancerous.

Now there is real and fake fear, heightened by the political opponents of the APC that supporting a Muslim-Muslim presidency by the Christendom is akin to offering a kola nut to a man who comes into one’s hut and defecates on the floor; instead of taking a stick to break his head, apologies to the incomparable Chinua Achebe, in “Things Fall Apart.”. So, the challenge facing the APC is how to separate the bumbling performance history of President Buhari, from the potentials on offer from Tinubu and Shettima.

This column believes and has argued that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, from his antecedents has the potential to be a great president, considering his capacity to think through great ideas that can change the present economic bugaboo of our tottering country. This column also believes that Asiwaju has the badly needed political sagacity to mediate the troubling scarecrow created to harass and harangue the national psyche by the manipulative political elites. But the road to that presidency is now strewn with thorns of religious politics in a divided country.

Some of those who had foresworn any support for another northern president after eight years of Buhari’s hegemonic rule, have refused to situate Tinubu as a strong southern presidential candidate who also needs a strong northern vice presidential candidate to have a good chance of winning the presidency. In their anger against the choice of Shettima, a northern Muslim as vice presidential candidate to Tinubu, a southern Muslim, they relegate geopolitics as subordinate to religiopolitics. Whether that discontent would buoy the candidature of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, instead of Peter Obi of Labour Party, is immaterial to them.

The argument that a vice president cannot stop the president’s determination to act in a certain manner, as evidenced by the tenure of Professor Yemi Osinbajo, is also considered inconsequential. For the antagonists of the Tinubu/Shettima candidacy, the Buhari’s excesses have created a nightmarish phobia. To tame that monster, Asiwaju’s famed sagacity will be tested in the days ahead.

The recent piece by Femi Adesina, the Special Adviser on Media, to President Muhammadu Buhari, titled “warning shots from Kigali” after a visit to Kigali Genocide Memorial,  was well aimed and smoking. Whether it decimated the target in the form of making the target abjure hatred is another matter altogether. Of course, Femi’s objective is to give hatemongers an opportunity to learn from the heart-rending stories of what hate caused in Rwanda, and for them to desist from their dangerous mixture of combustible materials.

What Femi did not however manifest in his piece is whether his principal, our dear president, Muhammadu Buhari, learnt relevant lessons from the visit to Kigali Genocide Memorial. If the president learnt his lessons, Femi did not advert his write-up to such, including any potential change of style and actions. But before I espouse why I say so, let me join Femi to trumpet that hate can truly kill a nation, and Nigeria is dangerously stymied in obtrusive hate actions and words. So, I join him to ask that we retrace our steps.

In his piece, Femi trained his well-aimed warning shots on hate speeches and acts by Nigerians, especially those speaking from the pulpit and the minarets, but not a word of condemnation about hate actions and speeches by those in authority. Of course, since he did not mention names, it will be unfair to judge whether he was fair or unfair to such persons, except if one has to juxtapose his earlier diatribe with some men of God, as the targets of his warning shots from Kigali.

Some of the preeminent men of God Femi had aimed his diatribe in the past include the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Most Rev. Dr. Matthew Hasssan Kukah, and Bishop David Oyedipo of Winners Chapel, and there are pellets in the shots from Kigali to reach the conclusion that the two men maybe among Femi’s current target. So, if they are amongst the targets, I hope they are not amongst those Femi referred to as the “so-called Bishops”, since both have eminently lived up to their titles as Bishop.

If Femi insists otherwise, then he can legitimately be accused of engaging in hate speech. But more importantly for this piece, is what many have regarded as hate actions manifested by the skewed appointments of President Buhari, in clear violation of the 1999 constitution as amended. But even most important is whether the president has learnt the important lesson behind the Kigali memorial, which I believe is to keep the despicable act of genocide in public consciousness and to enforce a national penance.

The main essence of this intervention is therefore to encourage Femi to advise his principal, President Muhammadu Buhari, to initiate a memorial in honour of the genocidal victims of 1966/67 in our country, Nigeria. The other essence of this essay is to encourage Femi to also advise the president to appreciate that he is the leader of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation, and that such consciousness should reflect in his actions, otherwise he would be accused of engaging in hate actions.

Should Mr President initiate the building of such a memorial, he would distinguish himself from the pack of other past presidents and leaders, including Gen. Yakubu Gowon, who as post-war leader had the best impetus to do so. While those who love to live in denial like the Ostrich, would think such a memorial is irrelevant, since the victims where vanquished in the war that ensued soon after the genocide, the benefit as Femi and the president must have seen, is to keep the despicable act in public consciousness and to abjure a repeat, under any guise.

Some of the Ostriches would even deny the waves of genocidal killings of Igbos and those associated with them, mainly in the northern part of the country before the beginning of the war. Such denials instead of healing the wounds exacerbates the injury, which in turn feeds the disillusionment of those affected directly and indirectly affected by the genocide. Perhaps such hurt feelings feeds the hate speech that Femi is complaining about; and without assuaging the hurt, those affected would tell Femi, in the words of immortal Fela kuti, ‘teacher don’t teach me nonsense’.

Without such a memorial, those who engineered and/or participated in the genocide can easily forget their atrocities and forgive themselves. And of course, the generation after them would have no reminders to make them believe that such despicable acts of hatred took place in our country. Furthermore, without such a memorial that stirs the conscience of the protagonists, what stops them from seeing what happened as a fair game, which can be repeated for the fun of it?

In writing this reaction to Femi’s warning shot from Kigali, I dusted up Emma Okocha’s book, titled: ‘Blood on the Niger – the first black-on-black genocide’, which gives a detailed acts of genocide against the Igbos of western Nigeria. Considering the status of Izoma Chief P.C. Asiodu, who was a member of General Gowon’s war cabinet, I figured that I should quote extensively his preface to to Okocha’s book to underscore the argument for a war memorial, to stem the hatred Femi hammered on in his piece.

According to Asiodu: “At Asaba and environs, from October 2 to the 7 in 1967, horrible massacres were committed by the federal troops. Hundreds of men were slaughtered as a result of cold, deliberate planning. Men of all ages, including promising youths in their prime as well as teenagers and septuagenarians, were shot in cold blood.” He went on: “The massacres were militarily unnecessary and were unprovoked as the Midwest were already re-conquered from Biafra troops, and Asaba was firmly in the control of Federal troops. There were absolutely contrary to the war aims of the federal government and the Code-of-Conduct issued to the Nigerian Army.”

He also wrote: “For so long, the truth about the massacres has not been told in any details. It is necessary to tell this truth in homage to the innocent who fell and partly in service to the nation by excising from its conscience any lie about the critical events of its history, to enable it grow and to make sure such wanton fratricide never recurs.” In the preface to the second edition, an eyewitness and survivor of the massacres, Dr Ify Uraih, wrote: “Over a thousand youths in their prime were buried in a mass grave at Ogbeosowa. There is no monument, nothing to remember those souls for their sacrifice.”

Also, the one-sided appointments, under President Buhari, which has reignited the fault lines that trouble our country, is too open to warrant any waste of space here. In conclusion, I can only say to Femi that charity should begin at home.

The All Progressive Congress (APC) is apprehensive of losing the party’s majority in the senate, following the rumoured bid of her 18 senators to defect to other political parties, after the party earlier lost seven senators to the opposition parties. While the major opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is also losing senators, they may become the major beneficiaries of the defectors, and thus be in control of the senate. Such a development has legal and political implications, and this column will examine them.

No doubt the controversial emergence of Senator Abdullahi Adamu, as party chairman bears some responsibility for this development. Having been drafted to do a hatchet job, the chairman concentrated on foisting a ‘consensus’ presidential candidate, and like the interim contraption that handed over to him, he was distracted from maintaining harmony between the legislative and executive members of the party. Unfortunately, the senate president, Ahmed Lawan, swallowed the consensus bait, and his greed has added to the embarrassment the party is facing. Now the senate president did not only lose the presidential primary, the winner of his senatorial primary seat, Bashir Machina, has refused to surrender the ticket, and has told Lawan and Adamu to go fry in the nearby desert.

So, Lawan’s ingratitude to Tinubu has turned a huge embarrassment to those who lied that President Muhammadu Buhari was going to force him on the party’s faithful as consensus candidate. With Lawan dispossessed of a senatorial return ticket, which he could have won if he had contested the senatorial primary, will he join the bandwagon of the aggrieved who want to leave the APC? If he stays in the party, and the party loses the majority in the senate by a wide margin, he may lose his plum senate presidency.

And if he refuses to step down, preferring to fight off any threat of impeachment, he would preside over a rancorous senate until the end of his tenure. Of course, considering that Lawan may join the rank of the aggrieved party primary losers, he would not likely perform the responsibility enshrined in section 68(2) of the 1999 constitution (as amended), which enjoins the senate president to declare vacant the seats of defectors in appropriate circumstance.

The section provides that: “The president of the Senate or the Speaker of the House of Representatives, as the case may be, shall give effect to the provisions of subsection (1) of this section, so however that the president of the Senate or the Speaker of the House of Representative or a member shall first present evidence satisfactorily to the House concerned that any of the provisions of that subsection has become applicable in respect of that member.”

With the potential that the senate president may jump ship if he is harbouring inordinate ambition to return to the senate in 2023, how can he accept to declare vacant the seats of the senators who have or will flagrantly violate section 68(1)(g) of the constitution? The section provides: “A member of the Senate or of the House of Representatives shall vacate his seat in the House of which he is a member if – being a person whose election to the House was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected.”

Considering that there is no division within the APC to justify the rumoured bid of 18 senators to jump ship like the earlier seven, which violates section 68(1)(g), such senators deserve to lose their senatorial seats. The Supreme Court confirmed this state of our law in the case of Hon. Ifedayo Sunday Abegunde v The Ondo State House of Assembly & Ors. In that case, the appellant who contested and won the Akure North/South Federal Constituency seat on the platform of Labour Party defected to Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), on the claim that there were factions within the Ondo chapter of the party.

The Supreme Court affirmed the concurrent judgment of the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal that by virtue of section 68(1)(a) and (g) the appellant has lost his seat in the House of Representative following his defection from Labour to ACN when there is no such division as envisioned by the constitution. In his argument in support of the appeal, the appellant had contended that any division in the party, whether at the ward, state or federal level can justify the invocation of the proviso to section 68(1)(g) of the 1999 constitution.

Rejecting the argument, the Supreme Court per Fabiyi JSC, reiterated her decision in FEDECO v Goni on the interpretation of section 64(1)(g) of the 1979 constitution which is in pari materia with section 68(1)(g) of the 1999 constitution, that a division that will justify the defection by a person elected on a one political platform to another would be one that affects the national structure of the party. The apex court thus put to rest the penchant for defectors to claim a phantom division within the party to justify their unbridled abuse of the constitution.

So, the senators elected on the platform of the APC who lost in the primary and indeed their colleagues from other parties should weigh their option properly before defecting. While this column sympathizes with those of them who are popular but where shoved aside by their state governors who have untrammelled dominance of the party delegates, they must also bemoan their carelessness while passing the 2022 Electoral Act, particularly the duplicitous section 84(12) that upended their plans.

As this column noted when it commented on the dogfight between the executive and legislative arms that led to the contentious provision, those temporarily exercising political power must see beyond their parochial personal interest. This advice is particularly so of those privileged to make laws, which would serve well beyond their limited tenure. Unfortunately most office holders fail to see power as temporal, and as such push personal interests as popular interests, and the result is the manmade crisis that pervade every aspect of our society.

It is such self-serving plan that made APC chairman and his cohorts to abandon the greater interest of the party in pursuit of a duplicitous agenda against the most popular presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The conspiracy contributed to the crisis of confidence between the APC-dominated National Assembly and the executive, in the run-down to the party primary. Now the APC chairman is begging the senators not to leave. This column hopes the horses have not bolted, before the APC chairman sought to bolt the stable door.

Perhaps, Asiwaju Tinubu can arrest the crisis and save the party the embarrassment of losing majority in the senate to the opposition.