Olakunle Abimbola

 

 

Rage, from a psychologist’s — or even commonsense perspective — is always double jeopardy.

On one hand, you take the most reckless of actions.  On the other, your brain is crippled, to its lowest capacity.  It’s merry tragedy foretold.

That about captures the #EndSARS protests gone awry.

Still, some quick, swift opening salvoes.

First, the tragic endgame: nothing can justify or rationalize the shootings at the Lekki, Lagos toll gate — absolutely nothing!  So, the army officers allegedly involved should be identified and brought to book.

By the same token, nothing can justify the orgy of brazen social media lies.  Suddenly, a “Lekki massacre” became a “raid”, because body bags can’t match the massacre claims!

That singular lack of integrity is the most spectacular blot on the #EndSARS protests.

Much more: those phony Lekki deaths fuelled raw passions that sent many others to avoidable graves, not to talk of hewn limbs, in other parts of Lagos, in post-curfew youth-security agency clashes.

Enter, the double-edged sword of social media: a potent tool of mass mobilization; yet a grim weapon of mass destruction!  Whoever plays, in which lane, should get their desert!

Like the trigger-happy Lekki soldiers, therefore, those that sent out those fatal lies, from their social media accounts, should be traced, arrested, tried and punished.

Actions have consequences, particularly wilful lies that lead to the death and maiming of others.

Even then, the rogue operatives, of the disbanded Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS), had it coming; so did the government itself, that tolerated their brazen abuse, of youths’ rights, for far too long.

So, the #EndSARS protests were as much a fiery street referendum on police brutality, as they were on the government’s condemnable fudging on it.  Therefore, the protests received near-universal support, as lawful, legitimate, reasonable and commendable.

Still, the government was wise to have quickly acquiesced to the #EndSARS demands; and announced steps to implement them — an acceptance of FSARS guilt?

That would have been a glorious climax, had the protesters done a tactical withdrawal, but outed with sound strategies, to push the government to implement their demands.

But citizen-government distrust made that virtually impossible.  Enter, then: the first, in the relay of errors, that finally screwed up the protests.

So, while #EndSARS was legit, #EndSWAT was hardly so.  True, trust was the big issue.  The protesters thought — rightly so, many would insist — that the government was selling a dummy, since FSARS had been “disbanded” many times before; and SWAT could well be FSARS in a new skin.

Yet, SWAT had no solid case against it, except conjectures, reason or emotive.  Besides, FSARS was set up to battle violent crimes, which from reports it splendidly did in the North, but abused its functions in most parts of the South.

It would, therefore, have been tragically unthinking of the government not to create an immediate alternative, warts and all, since the felons FSARS was founded to tackle won’t pause a second.  Besides, getting the government to back down is one thing, dictating where it must go, or what it must do, is another.

That reality, however, was lost on the triumphant protesters, flush with how easy the government had yielded to their demands.  Besides, they kept on adding to their demands, thinking they had the nervy government exactly where they wanted it.

That was a strategic blunder, for it slammed the gate on respectable exit and honourable change of directions, should things turn hot and nasty — as they eventually did.

Thus, the protesters’ demand, as a never-ending-state-of-flux, ushered in error No. 2: blocking off roads, including city highways and inter-city expressways.  Not a few even converted these roads into snappy kitchens, to cater for co-protesters!

That was the first sign of derailment, though they didn’t seem to know.  In Belarus, massive protests have been going on for three months now, over a fiddled presidential poll.  But despite their massive scale, not once did protesters block off traffic, thus alienating parts of the population.

Meanwhile, “glorious” pictures and crowing posts, via social media platforms, from the Lekki, Lagos protest epicentre, fuelled, among the excitable, a strong my-hood-is-more-brazen-than-yours contest — again, a big sign all was turning awry.

But the final plunge was the Lekki protesters’ decision to defy the curfew, instead of disbanding and heading home.  It was the tragic turning point all would come to rue!

That was the fatal crossover from legality to lawlessness.  True, the law guarantees peaceful protests.  But the same law arms the government with checks-and-balances, if things spin out of control.

That was the curfew — to dislodge crowds from the streets and secure and dominate the space.  That defiance, therefore, was the first handshake with disaster.  The unfortunate shootings were a reckless plunge into catastrophe.  The tragic aftermath, of arson and looting, was a grim kiss with anarchy, which scalds every lip and tongue.

So everyone involved, at any of these critical junctures, should be asked fair and legitimate questions; and punished, if found culpable.  Actions have consequences.

For those belching hate and more hate in troubled times — you hate Buhari without, hate Tinubu within, and crow to yourself you’re hip — this protest-gone-awry is living proof of the destruction unvarnished hate can wreak.  It is the bitter, even if slight, taste of Kigali, which leaves everyone a loser.  Remember Rwanda?

As for “revolution” romantics, even the obtuse know that is a trip to nowhere.  The Libyan revolution removed Muamar Gaddafi but left Libya in a 10-year anarchy, still running since 2011.

Even the French Revolution (5 May 1789-9 November 1799), perhaps history’s most romantic, left the French trading true blue bloods for a grand counterfeit (in Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte: 15 August 1769-5 May 1821), and even a fakery of that counterfeit (in Napoleon III, Charles-Louis Bonaparte: 20 April 1808-9 January 1873), prompting that Karl Marx famous quip: history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce!

It’s a critical juncture at which everyone must think — and think hard.  Yes, there is hardship in the land.  But is the solution destroying Lagos, Nigeria’s prime window of opportunity, that about everyone flocks to?  Or torching and looting small shops, that provide little jobs?

Then, the immediate conundrum: how do you persuade the police, killed, maimed and bruised by anarchists, to return to the streets, night or day, rain or shine, to protect the mass of innocent citizens from prowling, free-wheeling criminals?

That is what blind rage does.  One just hopes the grim lessons have been learned.  It’s time to think out of a jam, and not further box yourself in, by blind rage.

By Olakunle Abimbola

After all, it’s the fashion these days to be a desk general!” — the last quip of Jero’s Metamorphosis (published 1973) — was Prof. Wole Soyinka’s wry but devastating dig, at power-grabbing, opportunistic soldiers.

The late Chuba Okadigbo, inimitable Oyi of Oyi, and former president of the Senate, would further explore this dismissive motif.  He gored them as “coup heroes”.

But perhaps the most blistering, on the military power bullies, was Policeman, Alozie Ogugbuaja, and his pepper soup-and-coup theory.

The then Police superintendent strafed the military as streaming with idle minds, downing bowls after bowls of pepper soup and choice beer each day from 11 am, and thinking and dreaming and plotting nothing but coups!

Sure, that Alozie bomb blasted Ogugbuaja into career Siberia.  But it was a sobering thunder clap, which boxed the vain ears of the ruling military elite, at the high noon of General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime — the most reckless and insidious of them all!

Still, when our own WS was coining that immortal line — the final flourish of Jero’s Metamorphosis — he probably never knew how hard it would come back to haunt his now much debased kith-and-kin, in the Nigerian intelligentsia.

Pray, what is the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) today, but a bunch of  ”audio” intellectuals, barking insane threats on the union turf, rather than vibrating with ground-breaking research, and grooming, with quality intellect, the young lives in their care?

Like desk generals, like audio lecturers — epochal dual impostors fated, by the scandal of their near-zero sense of duty, to blight the future of their compatriots and wards!

Still time was, when the polity quaked with ASUU sympathy; and rocked with solid legitimacy for its cause: saving public universities, from wilful government disinvestment.

That peaked during the IBB frenzy at emplacing systemic underdevelopment, of which public education was first casualty; and President Olusegun Obasanjo’s pursuit of fond personal glory, when public good, forlorn and shunned, beckoned in vain.

Both eras (IBB’s military rule: 1985-1993; and Obasanjo’s second coming: 1999-2007) teemed with ASUU long strikes that all but destroyed the university calendar as we knew it.  Yet, the long-suffering victims, Nigerian students and their parents/ guardians, in ASUU’s support, bore the brunt with admirable patience and stoicism.

Between 1999 and now, ASUU has gone on strike 15 times, in 21 academic years — excluding its current comical “strike”, even after COVID-19 had paralyzed all: 1999 (five months), 2001 (three months), 2002 (two weeks), 2003 (six months), 2005 (two weeks), 2006 (one week), 2007 (three months), 2009 (four months), 2010 (five months), 2011 (two months), 2013 (five-and-a-half months), 2017 (one month) and 2018/19 (three months: 4 November 2018-7 February 2019).

The “strike campaign” birthed a landmark agreement in 2009, a Federal Government-ASUU deal, signed by the historic midwives: Bolanle Babalakin, SAN, the chairman of the Committee of Pro-Chancellors of Federal Universities, the late Gabriel Onosode, chairman of the re-negotiation committee and Ukachukwu Awuzei, then ASUU president.

That historic breakthrough — at least that was what the new save-the-university-template was assumed to be back then — agreed that each federal university should get a jab of at least N1.5 trillion between 2009 and 2011; and their state counterparts, an infusion of N3.6 million per student.  The deal also agreed to at least 26% of Nigeria’s yearly budget funding education, half of that going to the universities.

Needless to say, controversy broke out on the deal’s implementation.  The government claimed it had tried to consummate it, subject to the availability of funds — hardly good faith!  Lecturers’ pay was much enhanced, though, somewhat stalling the brain drain.

Still, ASUU insisted the government had not tried enough; and often, to drive home its point, reverted to its inevitable strikes.  Unfortunately, by ASUU’s bulldog approach to strike, as a cure-all tool, it started bleeding badly, on public trust and confidence.

But, no thanks to its hubris and arrogance, ASUU little realized it.  The premise of that hubris was that the government was always unpopular and could easily be tarred and bullied.  That fired the ASUU all-conquering bully complex.

But alas!  On that haughty altar, it merrily slaughtered its essence, surrendered its prime duty to its students, scorned the community that stood by it, and became a critical part of the problem it claimed it strove to solve.

Under the current presidency of Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, ASUU has plumbed its most insensate and insensitive worst.  That it little realizes it is well and truly tragic!

That’s why it would growl to be on an “indefinite strike”, when its students are anxious to salvage their 2020 academic year, after the COVID-19 paralysis; and its competitors, the private universities, are using the shambolic public university calendar to market own trade.  What crap!

ASUU’s case is not helped at all by its conceit, goading it to dictate how its employer must pay it.  But which employee does that, so long as he gets his due? That is the long-and-short of its anti-IPPIS crusade.  For ASUU, it could well end in tears!

The Federal Government has done well to give a final IPPIS ultimatum.  If it gets to that, it should declare a state of emergency in tertiary education.  Let academics who want to teach stay.  Let those fired by permanent Aluta leave.  It’s time the system reclaimed its soul!

That Prof. Ogunyemi could be comfy, operating from the University of Ibadan, shows a much degraded academy, across the board.  In late 1982, a students’ unrest led to a two-month closure of UI, spilling into 1983.  But despite further breaks, caused by the 1983 general election, the UI calendar had normalized by November 1983!

Is that UI culture, of fierce academic focus, no matter what, gone with the winds, of ASUU’s perpetual agitation?

While as an undergraduate at UI, ASUU had issues.  Yet, the likes of Prof. Abiola Odejide and Mr. Pius Omole (Language Arts) and Prof (then Dr.) Niyi Osundare (English), made a lasting impact on their students — of which Ripples is proudly one.

So did the University of Lagos trio of Profs. Olatunji Dare, Idowu Sobowale and Andrew Moemeka, all of Mass Communication, later at the Unilag Post-Graduate school.

Great teachers all, earning eternal gratitude, they helped to shape the Ripples’ offerings on this page, every week.

So, how much impact, on their students, are these ever-on-strike, unionized campus cowboys of today making; strutting the turf and making eternal threats?

For the sake of our future generation, it’s time we all called ASUU’s bluff!

Olakunle Abimbola

 

There is something always dire, it would appear, about radicalized elders.

There Was A Country, the swan song of Chinua Achebe, famous author of Things Fall Apart, dripped with Prof. Achebe’s unrelieved bile with Nigeria, on its relations with his native Igbo.

That work, like the sudden stone that hit a placid lake, let go ripples after ripples of neo-Biafra agitations.  A ghost, that seemed buried since January 1970, suddenly struck back with uncommon vengeance!

Now, Achebe rests in his grave.  But the fire of IPOB, a body his final book probably inspired, is tearing through the roof!

Beware of radicalized old men — dead or alive!

Prof. Banji Akintoye, distinguished professor of History and leader of the Yoruba World Congress (YWC), is another radicalized old man.

Acclaimed author of A History of Yoruba People (2010), a classic on Yoruba history, that rubs shoulders with Samuel Johnson’s long-running classic, The History of the Yorubas (1921) — but sans Johnson’s Oyo-centricity — Akintoye too appears, not unlike Achebe, full of bile at Nigeria, on behalf of his native Yoruba.

Beware of radicalized old men, alive or dead!

Still, Prof.  Akintoye’s old age Yoruba activism would appear only frenzied oomph from Gbogungboro, his now rested column in The Nation: a cascade of Yoruba ethnic pride, barely veiled irredentism, and cultural condescension towards other ethnics, sharing the Nigerian space.

From Gbogungboro’s harmless Yoruba romanticism, however, the YWC is plodding to a rather dangerous territory, in its so-called Oodua Republic project: inspiring, among its loud supporters, rabid Yoruba nationalism, rashly banging, on Nigeria’s door, for putative secession!  But alas!  Secession, peaceful or bloody, is no tea party.

Which is the thing: YWC followers, gung-ho disciples of one of Nigeria’s most accomplished historians, appear fired by little sense of history!

The other day, a radicalized fellow released a propaganda video, bragging that should “Baba Ekiti” be arrested — for a planned Oodua Republic rally billed for October 1 — he would “fast-track” the rage coming upon the land, raze the Nigeria House in London, and merrily go to gaol for patriotic arson!  Such a sweet, sweet braggart!

By the way, how is that different from Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s famous bluff, in the frenzied run-up to Biafra, in early 1967 — no power in Black Africa can defeat Biafra?So long for scalding crisis-time bluster!

Still, if Ojukwu was incensed by the northern anti-Igbo pogroms, what equivalent outrage might gore his 2020 Yoruba social media equivalent — maybe the ubiquitous “Fulani herdsmen”, on whose notorious necks every crime is hanged?

Besides, which Yoruba formal gathering goaded Mr. Yoruba Braggart to such insane threats?

Which Yoruba plebiscite mandated his impassioned Yoruba secession — beyond Yoruba diaspora romantics: that picturesque fancy, that conjures magical post-Nigeria ethnic El dorado, when the task at hand is thinking hard through the Nigerian miasma, and making something out of the conundrum?

That takes the discourse to the anatomy of the WYC “secession”.

WYC itself was birthed in what the Yoruba would dismiss as “egbirin ote” — a web of intrigues.  Prof. Akintoye “won” an “election”, as “Yoruba leader” against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, most prominent Yoruba political figure, in Nigeria’s often fractious progressive front.

Why Tinubu “ran”, in an “election” he neither graced nor asked for, was not so veiled: somebody, somewhere was ogling his extensive reach; and clamour and controversy, over “Yoruba leader”, would make good “me too”, feel good, propaganda!

Eternal intrigue is part of the Yoruba political DNA!

Even then, the good professor’s triumph soon ran into a storm.  ”Yoruba leader”, while unlikely to provoke much angst in the Tinubu camp — since Tinubu already boasts extensive national political reach — it would appear a frontal challenge to Afenifere, which needed that honorific to continue rubbing shoulders with other co-ethnics, on the national front.  Thus, Prof. Akintoye needed a definitive qualifier, to shoo off the Afenifere challenge.

Enter, the Yoruba World Congress, with its near-captive Yoruba Diaspora and their quaint attitude towards Homeland Yoruba, in the context of a fractious Nigeria, wrestling hard with nationhood.  So, you can excuse the London-Bridge-is-falling-down screech of our Yoruba social media London activist, with his offer of fanciful martyrdom!

Still, beyond the YWC politics of diaspora optics, that Nigeria has challenges does not automatically guarantee a post-Nigeria Yoruba El-Dorado.  Pre-Nigeria history pours ice-cold water on such romantic fancy.

On September 23, the Grand Council of Yoruba Youths (GCYY) marked the 134th anniversary of the Kiriji War (1877-1893) — 16 years of pan-Yoruba chaos, to fend off Ibadan free-wheeling plunder, on the dying embers of the Oyo Empire.

Beyond latter-day romanticization, the Oyo Empire is grimmest historical proof of Yoruba-on-Yoruba terror.  Aside from the Ijebu that somewhat secured themselves from this Yoruba kith-on-kin imperialism, no part of Yorubaland escaped its horror.  Towns and settlements like Modakeke, Igbajo, Gbongan, Ode-Omu, etc, are still living evidence of that era’s grave refugee crisis.

So, as Yoruba ultra-nationalists flay October 1 as ugly reminder of Lord Frederick Lugard’s illegitimate creation of Nigeria, they should also ponder the harsh historical censure of September 23, which celebrates Kiriji.

Kiriji balked at Yoruba-on-Yoruba imperialism.  Courtesy of a 16-year civil war, Kiriji halted Yoruba-on-Yoruba terror.  But all it achieved was a hideous stalemate.  Only the British big guns could enforce peace, in the Yoruba country.

But the Brits themselves — imperial rogues, with humongous and insatiable appetite for other people’s wealth — offered no charity!  Yoruba pacification had a huge price!  Enter Nigeria, everyone’s bogey, even at 60!

At 60, Nigeria as a well-integrated nation, is nowhere near where it should be.  So, everything to tinker with it — including radical political restructuring — should be encouraged, while making sincere efforts to reassure those scared by it all.

But making Nigeria’s nationhood blues some creepy bogey to launch disintegration is execrable, for it’s a loser’s mindset — remember that quip: winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win?

If Abraham Lincoln had quit with the pressing challenges of the America of his day, the United States, as we know it today, would have been aborted.  Yes, Nigeria has challenges.  But disintegration is no answer.

Olakunle Abimbola

 

SENATOR Oluremi Tinubu, sitting senator for Lagos Central, packs sparkling diamonds — and that’s not just for turning 60 on September 21; and basking, as it were, in the sparkle of it all.

Even with her own radiance, the senator’s diamonds sparkle more in others, mostly youths from humble homes — thanks to the value she has added to their lives.

She may now sit in the not-so-popular red chamber, of the National Assembly.  But Mrs Tinubu’s legacy, as passionate youth and gender mentor and equal opportunity crusader, of example and excellence, was cemented since her days as First Lady of Lagos State (1999-2007)

If you doubt, ask the bevy of one-day Lagos State Governors, mostly kids from humble homes, graduates of Lagos State public schools, who were Spelling Bee contest laureates, Senator Tinubu’s project, as First Lady.

Of this brood of 51 (from the official list of one-day governors, spanning 2001 to 2018, most times featuring each year’s winner and the two runners-up) two, for different reasons, stand out.

Chukwuebuka Anisiobi, the first-ever Lagos one-day governor in 2001, is the dean of them all.

Now a rig manager with OES Energy Services (a stand alone oil upstream firm, which used to be part of Oando Plc), he remains the proud dean of Spelling Bee winners, making quality contributions to national development, as a young professional.  His two 2001 runners-up were Kelikume Oliseh and Rhoda Olateru.

But even more remarkable, in grabbing with two hands, that rare opportunity to make good, which Spelling Bees offered talented teens in Lagos public schools, was Alexander Ezenagu.

In 2004, Ezenagu wasn’t the winner, or even the second-placed contestant.  Those were Tolulope Esan (2004 one-day governor) and Tobi Balogun (the “deputy”). He placed third, representing Bolade Grammar School, Oshodi, Lagos — and you can link the school’s locality to its probable demographics.

Yet, that win propelled Ezenagu.  He would go ahead to earn a first class in Law from the University of Ibadan; and another first class at the Nigerian Law School.

But all those were mere morning, on a long, brilliant and sparkling academic day, as Ezenagu would, by sundry scholarships, go ahead to earn an LL.M in commercial law, from Cambridge University, UK.  He would crown it all with a PhD in international tax law, from McGill University, Canada.

Dr. Ezenagu now works for Qatar Foundation, in Qatar, as assistant professor at the College of Law, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), owned by the Qatar Foundation.

Now, look at his trajectory: from Bolade Grammar School, Oshodi, Lagos, to Ibadan, Nigeria’s premier university, to Cambridge, a global Ivy League university, and Canada’s McGill University! That is the quintessential Oluremi Tinubu sparkle!

Now Ezenagu faces a glittering global career in international tax law, transfer pricing, tax planning, investment advisory and commercial law advisory and practice, as part of Nigeria’s ever twinkling Diaspora.

No happenstance — this humble-local-to-global-renown story.  Rather, it’s a product of Spelling Bee, quality public education thinking, from a First Lady, an extra-constitutional honorific that nevertheless, for Ezenagu and co, made stellar personal developmental difference.

That both Anisiobi and Ezenagu responded to emails sent to them in virtual minutes, just underscores how the senator sparkles, much so brightly, in the hearts of her grateful brood of mentees, who she adores, like a loving mom.

The Spelling Bee contest was well and truly revolutionary — and Anisiobi, Ezenagu and co, kids from different ethnics, in the Lagos public school system, but who belonged to a common tribe of limited opportunities, are grateful and living proof.  Their grooming and honing, post-1999, is proof all is not entirely dreary for Nigeria at 60, as the jeremiad ensemble love to drone on and on, on the eve of Nigeria’s own, to be fair, rather non-sparkling diamond!  Still, passionate jeremiads, as end in themselves, hardly change anything.

In contrast, Spelling Bee, and its midwife, the New Era Foundation (NEF), show what heights Nigeria can scale, if individuals, in or out of government, can buckle down to our collective challenge, and give their all without stint.

That is the Oluremi Tinubu ultimate sparkle; and the enduring legacy she left, as First Lady, in Lagos public education.

 

Tershaku: My Benue CJTF story

 

IN “Felled: Benue’s Fulani herdsman!  (15 September 2020), Alhaji Aminu Yaminu aka Tershaku, came across as metaphor for the tapestry of Benue’s politics of violence, which underscores its violence of politics: dummy killings, proxy guilt and sickening ethnicization of crime, that leave the majority clutching at the gory straw.

It would all appear a grim parody of the French playwright philosopher, Jean-Paul Sarte’s famous quip: hell is other people!

But after reading the story, a sad but measured Tershaku got across, pleading his innocence, his tone echoing another famous quip in English literature: more sinned against than sinning — from Shakespeare’s King Lear, and later, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

That set Ripples on a columnist’s nightmare — could the column have inadvertently hurt an innocent citizen?  Though the Alhaji hung up after being asked about an alleged “wrongful arrest”, a claim by one of his confederates who goes by the Facebook name of Swi Swi, Ripples decided to present Tershaku’s own story, from an unnamed document Tashaku sent to Ripples’ WhatsApp account.

“Alhaji Aliyu Tershaku was a great messiah that God sent to Benue State,” the document wrote of his involvement in the Benue Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF). “Alhaji Tershaku worked hard by ensuring there was peace, in our communities by introducing CJTF.  He ensured that there was peace between us and our invaders.”

The document also claimed that way back in 2013, the CJTF was a pact reportedly entered into by Benue and Nasarawa state governments, and secured by the then DIG Operations.

The document also listed other eminent Tivs, reportedly privy to that initiative: Gen, Atom Kpela (rtd), Abu King Shuluwa, Tor Sankera 1, (Sankera was the zone where the Gana terrorism bit most), Prof. Daniel Saror, the late Dr. Sule Abenga (then Ter Makurdi), David Iorhemba (former Speaker House of Assembly), Surveyor John Tondo (former commissioner for Land and Survey), (then) Attorney General and commissioner for Justice, President and Secretary Mzough U Tiv, and Adviser on Special Security to Governor Suswam.

Beyond sainthood or devilry, however, both the Benue CJTF and the South West Amotekun push, to better secure the people, a radical restructure of the current one-Police federal civil security system.

That is the disease.  Every other thing is a symptom, though fast growing into grave distractions.

 

Olakunle Abimbola

 

The controversial felling of Terwase Akwaza Agbadu, aka Gana, the dreaded Benue-Nasarawa-Taraba axis terrorist-in-chief, has come with gallows humour.

Gana’s wife, Wantor Akwaza, reportedly No. 2 in a harem of six, has staked a N5 billion compensation, for the despatch of her darling hubby, who nevertheless killed other women’s husbands, children, uncles, nieces, nephews, et al, even before you could mutter “Gana!”, his dreaded moniker.

Indeed, terrorists’ lives too do matter!

But the humour, grim and dark, that really takes the cake, is the one from the military, pushing for a N50 million bounty, which Benue Governor Samuel Ortom had placed on the head of the felled arch-terrorist — mind you, for information leading to his arrest, not for his summary despatch.

Between capture and elimination, however, would appear mere semantics to the dare-devil military, that summarily despatched the dare-devil Gana, prompting the dare-devil bounty demand!

“…The Nigerian Army deserves to be paid the N50 million ransom, having killed Gana,” The Nation of September 11 quoted an unnamed spokesperson of the Nigerian Army Special Forces Command, in Doma, Nasarawa State, that flatly declared.  ”The assignment has been completed, the Army should be paid” — no story!

A felled terrorist’s life may matter.  But so too, it would appear, the sweat of the Army braves that erased the menace, going one up from hoped-for capture, to summary rupture!  It never gets more sardonically roiling!

No surprise, though: a controversy just broke out on Gana’s death.  The Army claimed he was killed after troops returned fire in self-defence, against Gana’s gang; and indeed displayed, as proof, some captured impressive array of small arms.

But others have countered, claiming Gana was killed in cold blood after capture, en route to meeting Benue Governor Ortom in Makurdi, to consummate the amnesty deal that drew him out of his native Gbitse lair and jungle.

That deal, broken-hearted wifey Wantor had sworn, would have catapulted Gana from devil-in-chief in the bush, to soul-winner-in-chief for Christ in the city, in a 21st century Nigerian relive of the Saul-to-Paul conversion!

Both Governor Ortom, and former governor but now sitting Senator Gabriel Suswam, appear leaning towards the non-Army account; decrying any extra-judicial killing, if indeed that allegation was true.  That calls for a commission of inquiry to tease out the facts, and apportion blames.

Either way, however, no tears from this end.  He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.  Now, that was no law of Moses, staking an eye for an eye.  Rather, it was divine logic handed down by the Christ himself, pacific and long-suffering, even at the height of his passion.

Both Ortom and Suswam may well be moved to rue Gana’s grim end, by their sheer and shared humanity.  Besides, both share identity as Benue governors, present and past, and should be seen as no-nonsense due process apostles.

But the Ortom/Suswam Gana sympathy could also have come from Benue’s rotten local politics of identity, with its dirty and smelly underbelly, to which many allege the late Gana — and other Benue terrorists moonlighting as “Fulani herdsmen” — might have been central.

Flashback, 2018.  It was the great slaughter, by “Fulani herdsmen”, of the Benue 73, whose mass burial drew scalding emotions and frothing sympathies, nationwide.

On ground to commiserate, with the Benue mourner-in-chief, then APC Governor Ortom, were PDP governors, Rivers’ Nyesom Wike and Ekiti’s Ayo Fayose, who even donated cash, to help Benue deal with its grief — even if viewed cynical by many.

Why?  Even Olusegun Obasanjo, former president of the Federal Republic, made a whistle-stop Benue sortie, to lay a wreath, at the mass graves!

But that brilliant piece of political necromancy would come unstuck at the felling of another Benue 17.  Ironically after, all talks of mass graves vanished.

Again, “Fulani herdsmen” had on 24 April 2018, attacked the St. Ignatius’ Catholic Church, in Ayer-Mbalom, in Benue’s Gwer East local government, killing two priests, Joseph Gor and Felix Tyolaha, aside from 15 others.

But the snag, this time round: the culprits were neither Fulani nor herders but Benue militiamen, led by Aminu Yaminu aka Tashaku, born Tiv Christian but Muslim convert, and pristine disciple of Mohammed Yusuf, the Boko Haram leader killed in police custody, whose cold murder triggered the Boko Haram insurrection.

Indeed, Tashaku was detained with Yusuf; and was part of the first wave of terror, in Boko Haram earliest days.   But more damning: Tashaku, then nabbed by the military, was head of a wing of the Benue militia, enforcing the state’s anti-open grazing law.

Also, a 24 July 2017 petition, by the Shitile community, in Benue’s Katsina Ala local government, fingered Tashaku as a ruthless enforcer of a Benue Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), accused of ethnic cleansing and sundry abuses in that locality.

The petition claimed the CJTF was “supervised and armed with sophisticated automatic firearms through the office of the [Benue] Security Adviser, Edwin Jando and commanded by one Aliyu Tashaku, who enjoys the ignoble fame of having been an operative of the Boko Haram terrorist group.”

The Katsina Ala link here is rather instructive. Katsina Ala sits at the hub of Gana’s terror, as part of the Sankera geo-political zone, consisting of Ukum, Logo and Katsina Ala local government areas.

From this core, Gana struck terror, in banditry, cattle rustling, and kidnapping-for-ransom, in travellers and denizens of Taraba, Benue, Kogi and Nasarawa states.  Especially vulnerable were travellers on the Katsina-Ala/Jalingo road axis.  Most of these crimes were hanged on the ubiquitous “Fulani killer herdsmen”.

Indeed, a Gana criminal disciple, identified as Aondehemba aka Major, boasted to The Nation of September 13 that Gana left behind some 200 “well-trained gang members”, spread out in the forests of Benue North East and neighbouring Taraba State.  When those ones strike too, they would be “Fulani helmsmen” minted in Benue!

Gana, who “Major” claimed buried alive his 12-year-old daughter in his Gbitse village, for an invincible charm that couldn’t save him from eventual doom, is the latest sickly metaphor for rogue politicians arming violent criminals to fix elections.

Those who shed crocodile tears for Gana are entitled to their due process ducts.  But Boko Haram, Niger Delta militancy and Benue enforcers moonlighting as Fulani herdsmen, stream from a common source: thugs armed to muscle elections, but left high and dry after.

To root out future Ganas, therefore, the political elite must break this execrable link.a

By Olakunle Abimbola

On Nasir El-Rufai, the tempestuous Kaduna governor, the Paul Usoro-led Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) executive threw the first stone.

Flush with holy anger, it had hoped to earn full plaudits, from its moral high horse: a bristling, no-nonsense crusader corps of southern Kaduna lives matter (SKLM), to borrow from that current global rave: Black Lives Matter (BLM) .

It probably did, from the lobby that goaded it to act.  That lobby, and their media allies, gloated over El-Rufai’s dis-invitation to speak at NBA’s 60th annual conference show.

But from a counter lobby, what it got was a vicious pelt of smelly eggs, as a segment of its northern stakeholders fumed.  Enter, the New Nigerian Bar Association (NNBA).

Alas!  NBA found it was no less corporately flawed as El-Rufai allegedly is, judging from the strafing anti-El-Rufai memo, signed by Silas Joseph Onu and Chidi Anslem Odinkalu, two top lawyers but no especial friend of the governor, that sparked it all.

Talk of rashly throwing the first stone!

But the NNBA threat could just be fore-cat’s paw, in the severe, prolonged intra-NBA hurricane to come; with many angered at the electoral process that shot Paul Usoro (SAN) to power — a subject of legal dispute still, even after the silk has served out his term.

Poor Olumide Akpata!  The SAN-giant slayer’s own election controversies, coupled with Usoro’s office-parting El-Rufai storm, have gifted Akpata a poisoned chalice!

Now, aside from NNBA, there are also whispers of a South West Bar break-away faction, which not a few have sardonically dubbed Amotekun Bar Association (ABA)! Perhaps, when a putative Bar Association of Nigeria (BAN) dawns, Akpata’s NBA would realize BAN could well ban its monopoly — every pun intended!

To be sure, jumping to El-Rufai’s defence is no pleasure, given his divisive persona.  Yet, his fate can’t be tied to the near-eternal cauldron that has been southern Kaduna.

To do that is to continue the flawed strategy of scapegoating extant leaders of that troubled clime, of which El-Rufai is latest.  But if that didn’t extinguish the cauldron in the past, it won’t do it now.

So, what is needed is radical re-thinking, on the southern Kaduna question.  But more on that presently.  Now, back to the governor.

Nasir El-Rufai hails and nails himself, in one total package: his brilliance hails him, his petulance nails him.

His friends beam at his brilliance, particularly in El-Rufai’s unfazed duels with uppity southerners, spiritual and temporal: sectional snobs and ethnic chauvinists, who tend to posture, with a final swagger, that every northerner is a dummy.  His foes bark at his petulance, particularly irate southerners, and their southern Kaduna kith-and-kin in faith, who bristle at why the mercurial Hell (sorry, El)-Rufai won’t lay down to be bullied and slaughtered by anyone.

Still, both El-Rufai traits show the human in the man, though the jury is out, as on any controversial figure, on how the man mainly weighs on society — good or bad.

Talking of controversy and divisiveness, even with the ringing denunciation of the Onu/ Odinkalu memo, little separates El-Rufai from Rivers’ Governor Nyesom Wike, who most times speaks, not with the air of projecting superior logic, but as a gubernatorial braggart that damn well loves the sound of his voice!

Indeed, the gory harvest of lives and limbs at election seasons, since Wike became an active player in Rivers, should make the governor (even if for vicarious liability) an eternal pariah in NBA and allied human rights business, though Wike is himself a lawyer, and a member of the Body of Benchers.

That Wike cut the Usoro NBA mustard, and El-Rufai did not, has left the Olumide Akpata NBA fending off not-so-illegitimate charges of first, hypocrisy;  and then, southern domination, simply because the southern lawyers lobby boast tremendous media savvy, that could bully, intimidate and subdue.

That is about the long-and-short of the NNBA cause.  That poor Akpata had gathered NBA northern hierarchs, to re-pledge allegiance, does not take away that slur.

Ironically, that media domination — or lack of it — appears a crucial link, that has continued to fuel the southern Kaduna tragedy.

For eons in southern Kaduna, the Fulani (“voiceless” in the dominant southern media) have clashed with the area’s non-Muslim, Christian or African faith adherents (“voiceless” in the Muslim-dominant northern order).

The result has been the serious seasonal spurt of needless blood.  That is not about to stop, unless backers, of both blocs, think less as antagonists, and more as community.

The grim fact is that on both sides, there are no saints.  But aplenty, there are victims, tragic mutual canon-fodders, seasonally despatched by mutual drivers of mayhem, to teach the other side stiff, gory lessons.

Besides, the mutual hate and loathing, across the murderous aisle, have erected a cynical cover for free-wheeling, vicious crimes, pouncing on the vulnerable, cocksure all would be blamed on the Fulani-natives crises.

No doubt: the southern media, taking the southern Kaduna non-Muslim natives as hopeless underdogs, has always clambered to their cause.  That fits pat into Christian vs Muslim/indigene vs settler narratives, that rather resonate with the South.

But both narratives are galvanized by thick conspiracy theories of brutal rogue deep state players, allegedly arming the Fulani; and goading them to alleged southern Kaduna genocide, who the southern lobbies make it their bounden duty to stop.

So, each time they clash, the Fulani quietly cry to their alleged high rogue backers, while the other side cock sympathetic ears for the sure southern media thunderclap, and legal activists’ bellow to follow; no matter who the aggressor is.

After, both sides lick their wounds and build up to fight another day — and the mutual loathing and destruction continue.

Breaking this bloody cycle needs taking out the enforcers on both sides.  Sadly, that appears beyond the ken of about everyone, as every partisan-supporter appears viscerally wired to the conflict.  The umpteenth victims? The folks that live in the area.

Once upon a time, Kaduna State appeared a roaring inferno: a permanent hot bed of northern host vs southern settler riots. But then came Ahmed Markarfi (Kaduna governor, 1999-2007) who fixed the problem and left lasting peace.

Governor El-Rufai should ponder his own legacy, and essay a similar deal for southern Kaduna.  That would be tough.  But it would be a fantastic legacy.

Olumide Akpata, new NBA president, has a no less pressing chore: to re-make whole, the poisoned chalice Paul Usoro handed him.

But clearly it’s high time El-Rufai, NBA, the media and other stakeholders banded together on southern Kaduna: to save precious lives, across the warring divide.

That is how all southern Kaduna lives can really matter.

Olakunle Abimbola

 

 

Amotekun and community police, twin-drivers of the latest security controversy, must be placed in requisite conceptual blocs: the clash between federalist and centralist pulls, in a country craving a workable balance.

Still, an early caveat: Amotekun wouldn’t have had any appeal, nor community police any need, had the central police and allied security system not faltered; so much so that many citizens now begin to question the very basis of the Nigerian state.

But today’s reaction to community policing (latest tool of the centralist forces) and Amotekun (latest counter-tool of the South West federalist wing — and the most vibrant arm of the nationwide federalist army), appears rooted in the utterances of Nigeria’s tripod of founding fathers, with their accompanying conspiracy theories.

You must, however, note: these utterances were driven more by the mutual fear of the unknown in emergent Nigeria.  So were the distemper that came with these fears, and have plagued the polity till this day.

Sir Ahmadu Bello, the famed Sar’dauna of Sokoto and first northern premier, spoke of dipping the Koran in the sea; and carving out all of southern Nigeria among his political lieutenants, while he bossed affairs from Kaduna.  That hegemonic boast naturally provoked a fierce southern anti-Islamization whiplash.

Still, the Sar’dauna bluster would appear driven more by the North’s impotence at feared southern domination (in a Nigeria to be driven by products of Western education, where the North could barely compete), than any cocksure hegemonic reality, even if the North indeed harboured such a dominant power dream.

Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the great Zik of Africa in 1949, told the Ibo Federal Union gathered in Aba, that the “God of Africa … created the [martial] Ibo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of the ages …”

Ironically, Zik’s hint at eventual Igbo domination, even if benign, was rooted in Igbo fears and complaints, in 1949 colonial Nigeria: “Since suffering is the label of our tribe,” he rued, “we can afford to be sacrificed for the ultimate redemption of the children of Africa.”

Chief Obafemi Awolowo, clearly the sharpest developmental mind of his era, seemed to have taken the Sar’dauna hegemonic threat most frontally, leading the Yoruba and their culturally liberal worldview, which bristled at any domination, benign or malign.

Better to die and perish, he was quoted to have sworn, than be subjugated by anyone!  But the same Awo, more than anyone of his era, articulated a federalist principle (to fend off any ethnic domination in emergent Nigeria) and mass education (to make his people better compete, in the polity to come).

This brief trip into Nigerian contemporary history demonstrates that in this conceptual push-and-pull, each side generates emotive distempers, which portray the polity as an irredeemable dystopia — which it is not.

But these distempers are so fearsome, they become symptoms that loom larger, and seem far more virulent, than the actual disease.  They also make complex otherwise simple issues.

Welcome, yet again, to another distracting bedlam, where folks yell at each other, after which no one is none the wiser!

Yet, for a fruitful discourse, folks should reason with one another.  That compels a clinical analysis, in which venom and emotions have little place.

Now, back to the core issue: on central policing, the Nigerian centrist pull has failed — and there is no other way to put it.

Despite Nigerian regions’ abuse of local police, pre-1st Republic and during that short-lived era, unitary Police, in a federal Nigeria, is catastrophe waiting to happen.  The current security meltdowns are ample proof of that epochal miscalculation.

The Federal Government’s latest “community police” is, frankly, an attempt to dig deeper to the hole, when there ought to be a quick, smart strategy to bale out of that security ditch.

Indeed, “community police”, unleashed from Abuja, is a violent contradiction in terms.  Perhaps it could offer some comfort, if it were conceived to link the central Police command with the outlying communities, the savage butt of the serious insecurity crisis.

That way, there would be some built-in flexibility, in the operational command structure, featuring Abuja and local players.

But the Garba Shehu community police portraiture, in which the IGP is summary czar, is much of the present same, which has not worked.  It risks being another bureaucratic layer, which further pushes urgent solution away from a crying crisis.

Still, the Amotekun lobby themselves appear more primed to gripe and growl (perhaps for good reasons), at the crafty central subversion of the Amotekun agenda.

Indeed, the South West compromise to re-make Amotekun a state-by-state affair, from the unified regional outfit it was originally conceived, fuels the promoters’ anger.

Still, this cold point must be made, which again reinforces the supremacy of clinical thinking over base anger: Amotekun is not especially useful to the South West because it is harmful to others.

On the contrary, Amotekun is useful, nay critical, to all — East, West, North and South. Indeed with a North West Amotekun variant, Aminu Bello Masari, Katsina governor, won’t complain his outlying areas are sitting ducks for bandits, because they are thinly policed.

With the failure of the central security apparatus, therefore, the Amotekun concept, of decentralized policing, spiced with a vibrant local content, to aid intelligence-gathering and forestall crime, is the sane way to go.

So, different shades of Amotekun, all over the geo-political zones, should earn a joyful — and grateful — federal nod.  It should help the Federal Government regain the security mojo. It’s a win-win for everybody, that could presage a new security dawn.

In the toxic centralist-federalist exchange, many have claimed a central police is a hegemonic agenda.  But what is hegemony worth, if you can’t secure the space, which you dream to dominate?  If this central system is failing, how can that hegemony survive?

Decentralizing security, with requisite local input, is the way to go.  That is how the locals can take ownership of own security, by not taking laws into their hands.

Still, Nigerians must learn to discuss this crucial issue without throwing tantrums and belching fire.

A suitable security architecture should not continue to plague Nigeria, as race relations is plaguing Donald Trump’s America, 244 years afters it’s 1776 Declaration of Independence.

But only a frank exchange of ideas anchored on logic and common sense, not a thunderous trading of insults driven by base fears, can avert that plague.

By Olakunle Abimbola

Just as well the holy fathers, pleading sacred exception, from holy arrogance, are blazing at the new CAMA, with holy ire — and fire!

The “new CAMA” is the Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020 (which replaces CAMA 1990), signed into law on August 7 by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Section 839 (1) and (2) of CAMA 2020 may well signal true karma for churches, mosques and allied holy racketeers, though the target is general thieving charities.  Any charity whose accounting is found wanting, risks a replacement of its trustees, under the new law.

But that piece of generic legislation has sent the holy fathers threatening, growling and roaring!

Indeed, why should sacred enterprises bow to profane laws, by a rude and irreverent secular republic?

But before you roast the seething spiritual fathers, peep at their secular cousins, and their sizzle over “hate speech”, in the Obadiah Mailafia-induced N5 million radio fine question.

Media Titans, high secular priests of speech and allied rights, clearly sympathetic to the smitten radio — a peer in distress — bristle over what constitutes “hate speech”, even if its basic meaning appears simple and clear enough.

Now, what’s this?  Spiritual and secular tag-bullies, ranged against a weak, prostrate and lowly state?  You’d be damned if the state stomached their pillorying!

Still, hollow exceptionalism, driven by empty opportunism, is one reason contemporary Nigeria stagnates.  It’s high time the authorities, therefore, faced down that crappy mindset.

Winners Chapel Bishop David Oyedepo’s whine-and-damn style wasn’t really unexpected.  You know the bishop would rail, any time public policy clashed with his investments, spiritual or temporal.

So, it was all a tale of the expected: when he launched a tirade against the new CAMA,  a deep rumbling-in-the-cathedral in tow.  His doting congregants, in captive roar, cheered at his holy bragging against the secular order.  The priest himself, flush with combat, awaited that day, when profane orders would appoint trustees over his sacred church!

But any attempt at thinking the holy bishop represented only the fringe of Nigerian Christendom quickly vanished, with the official response of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

CAN thundered at CAMA 2020: “The satanic section of the controversial and ungodly law is section 839 (1) and (2), which empowers the commission to suspend trustees of an association for some given reasons” — a veritable appeal to pity, which has no place in rational discourse.

Then, the flexing of supreme spiritual powers, over a prostrate secular order: “The church cannot be controlled by the government because of its spiritual responsibilities and obligations.  That is why we are calling on the Federal Government to stop the implementation of the obnoxious and ungodly law until the religious institutions are exempted from it.”  Again, nothing but cheap holy bluster.

Still, there you go!  After a racket of adjectives and frenzied name-calling, all powered by holy gas, the best CAN can plead is exemption!  In other words, while other charities, registered under the same set of laws, can be regulated, churches cannot — and should not?

On what pillar would such exemption stand, in the eye of the law — on the diktat of holy exceptionalism, solely and arrogantly defined, prescribed and imposed by CAN? How even fair, legitimate or logical is that?

Besides, what happens to the Christ Jesus’ sacred concept of being under authority?  Yes, churches are under the authority of their sponsoring missions.  But if those missions are not under the authority of the state (without invading their constitution-secured right to faith and spiritual freedom), why does a church have to register as a charity under the law, in this case, CAMA?

Didn’t Jesus, the Christ Himself, say give to God what is God’s; and to Caesar what is Caesar’s?  But then, that is taking up CAN on the logical front.  That is one area it isn’t willing to play, because it can’t win.

That explains its un-Christ-like arrogance and emotive blather; and its crafty, holy filibustering, instead of a logical marshal of its case — if any — in utter disregard, if not outright contempt, for others with which it shares the Nigerian space.

Still, CAN is right on one score: CAMA 2020 is “satanic” — but not in the self-serving way it wanted its message understood.  It would bring out the Satan in smart Alecs that convert God’s trove into personal and family treasures.  Those would be named and shamed!

Now, how can that be bad for any polity, spiritual or temporal?

But CAN and other religious lobbies are not the sole hustlers, shopping for exceptions to dodge responsibility.  Other secular bodies do — including the media, that push ideological fixation to fend off reasoned discourse.

A favourite rhetorical question, in Nigeria’s newsrooms and Editorial Board suites, is: “who determines hate speech?” — asked with a triumphant and deadpan finality, that signals “end of discussion”, to parody that popular street lingo.

The Mailafia affair, and the offending radio’s N5 million fine, by National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), has brought media folks posing that query with renewed vigour.

Twenty-six years after, people still flinch at the Rwanda genocide of 1994.  Yet, only a few, if any at all, seem to remember the “media slaughter” that powered it all: a Rwanda radio charging inflamed killers to “cut down the tall trees!”, a barely veiled code, for the tall and endangered Tutsis!

Incidentally, the Arusha, Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, gaoled for life, Father Athanase Seromba, a Hutu Catholic priest, for his role in the brutal slaughter of some 2, 000 ethnic Tutsis, in the infamous Nyarubuye massacre.  That tribunal also convicted the killer radio’s sponsors, including presenters.

In the beginning (according to the Bible), there was the Word.  That word was God.  He created all.  In Rwanda, there was also the word.  But that word was hate.  It destroyed all!

Fierce Ideologues of free speech, who poker-face wait to define “hate speech”, miss the point.  Everyone should take responsibility for whatever they say or write.

After that, we are all better primed, to push against government abuse of citizens’ rights, in the liberty-control continuum.

Anything short of that is pursuing, on the secular plain, the holy gas CAN pushes on the spiritual sphere.  Dodging responsibility is an expressway that leads to perdition.