The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Lives matter

    Lives matter

    By Gabriel Amalu

    The brutal killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black American, by a ferocious gang of four Minnesota State police officers, has set the United States of America on the boil. Floyd, a minority, by race, was killed by white policemen, after a gangster treatment. A viral video, shows Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, kneeling on the neck of Floyd, like a pew. A plea by Floyd that he couldn’t breathe, caught no ice with the Dracula-policeman, incensed on drinking blood.

    As I write, damn social distancing, and all the World Health Organisation’s protocols on the ravaging impact of corona virus pandemic, several American cities, including the city of Detroit, Kentucky, New York, and California, are in turmoil. Shoulder to shoulder, the enraged residents of the cities are on rampage over the unadulterated racism of the policemen. Unfortunately, some rioters have resorted to looting and destruction of public properties over the criminal activity of the policemen, who ordinarily should be in charge of preventing the commission of crime.

    The America president, Donald Trump, in his usual brusque cynical manner, showed little sympathy for the aggrieved citizens, calling the violent protesters thugs, and other unprintable names. He has even threatened to send the army to quell what is turning into a rebellion, reminiscent of the several decades of struggle for civil rights, in the United States of America. The slogan, “Black lives matter” has caught the buzz, and the matchers, even threatened the White House briefly, as that 20th century bastion of democracy, was briefly shut-down, while the authorities appraised safety.

    The venom in the public arena, shows a seething public discontent with the system. Thanks to social media, the insidious criminality of the policemen would have gone without evidence, and who knows how many of such brutal criminality, by policemen had escaped public scrutiny? In our country, Nigeria, law enforcement agents in their invidious attempt to enforce the nationwide lockdown, earlier in April and May, maliciously killed not less than 18 persons.

    While a few of the killings elicited public anger and protest, none can compare to the crisis in the United States of America, over the killing of Mr Floyd. Even with the tepid reactions of Nigerians against the police killings, those in charge must realise that lives matter. Psychologists would tell us that piled up anger is a far greater danger, than instant an emotional outburst. Many of course, believe the present crisis across American cities is a piled-up outburst over the continued discrimination against minorities, especially by the security agencies.

    In our country, there are several seething public discontentment, and unless those in charge take steps to change the tide, our nation could upon a significant tweak, go up in flames without notice. While racism is not one of our challenges, because we are of the same race, tribalism and religious bigotry, is a major impediment to national cohesion. One of the greatest charges, against the government of President Muhammadu Buhari is tribalism, particularly in the appointment of public officials.

    Many public commentators have complained, against the lopsided appointments by his government without any change. The Igbos which form a significant portion of the population of the country have also complained that Buhari’s government has excluded them from the national security council without any justification. There is also the charge that the government has been favouring those who profess the same faith with the president, while discriminating against others, in making appointments into security agencies.

    Even amongst members of the same faith in the north, there is serious tension, between the indigenous Hausas and the Fulani, especially the Bororo stock. In parts of the northwest, the crisis manifests in cattle rustling, and herders and farmers clash. Killings and counter killings, between the rivals have become so permissive, that the society appears numbed about the numbers. The daily carnage, seems to have overwhelmed and numbed the authorities such that a standard template of condolence is the only response after every mass killing.

    Further down the middle belt, cruel massacres appear a permanent feature of living. The carnage masquerades as clashes between farmers and herders, in some places. In Plateau and Benue, the claims of an organised genocide is rampant, and each time a wave of killings take place, the local and federal authorities merely throw up their hands in the air, in complete surrender. Between the Tivs and Jukuns, the ancient demon of rivalry, has become more destructive, with the ready availability of sophisticated instruments of mass killing.

    In the northwest, for a group, there is a clear declaration that live does not matter. As the vortex of the killing machine, is the Boko Haram, which has declared war on the rest of the country. With a misbegotten brand of Islamic religion as their impetus, the gang of criminals go about decapitating lives and properties. Despite being a rag tag army of bandits, the Nigeria Army, which declared war on the Boko Haram in May 2013, has not been able to defeat the criminals, after more than seven years of military offensive.

    Down south, the nation is just a shade safer, with kidnapping, armed robberies, farmers and herders clashes, also rampant. In parts of the southeast, there is a swell of public opinion, that there is a calculated attempt, to use the herders and Almajiris to overrun the territory. Fears of imminent insurgency, has become so notorious that political and socio-cultural organisations, have raised alarms beyond the country. The southwest is no less under a threat, as states in the region have raised a regional security agency as a counter measure.

    To make matters worse for the entire country, the burgeoning economic meltdown, has been made worse by the corona virus pandemic. According to some economists, Nigeria would need to spend more than 60% of its estimated income, in the next 10 years to service its local and foreign debts. With over N33 trillion debt overhang, the ratio of the increase in debt profile, cannot equate to the ratio of economic growth. There is also the likelihood that the low growth ratio, may go in the negative direction, if the country goes into another recession.

    So, there is every reason, to be wary about the value of life in our country, just as we watch the Americans war, to prove it. Those in authority, whether political, or otherwise, must worry that life in our country, has become: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, as wrote Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century. It will be foolhardy, to ignore the signs of distress across the country as the governments at the federal and state levels celebrate another anniversary.

  • Has America lost it?

    Has America lost it?

    Olatunji Dare

    Lately, the news has got so depressing that sometimes I wished I could escape from it.

    That is the way I have been feeling since the coronavirus pandemic changed the rhythm of life, upending our assumptions, habits, verities, beliefs, plans, and the entire spectrum of human relationships.

    The feeling becomes almost overpowering as each news cycle brings with it the latest bulletin on the ravages of the disease – fresh outbreaks, a grim tally of deaths, with those that have occurred since the last bulletin in parentheses; the desperate battles to save stricken patients amidst crippling shortages of equipment and supplies, relieved mercifully by occasional tales of heroism and generosity and sacrifice.

    You felt helpless as death, violent, agonizing death, stalked the street and the neighbourhood, places near and far, familiar places around which your life has oscillated.

    Who would have thought that, in response to the pandemic, America the Beautiful would be reduced on the world stage to America the Pitiful, its repellent president pouting petulantly, enacting sophomoric stunts and engaging in bilious rants at a time that calls for leadership of the highest order?

    That feeling was especially strong as the world approached a macabre milestone:  100, 000 deaths, on American soil, resulting directly from coronavirus disease that Trump had dismissed casually as just another “Democrat hoax,” a bogus manifestation that would vanish just as suddenly and as it had appeared.  Just give it a week or two, he had said.

    Those who thought that Trump could still be saved from his hubris and narcissism and that that the milestone would concentrate his mind and make him sober for once were cruelly disappointed.   The milestone went unremarked in the White House until the following day, and then only desultorily.

    Trump had much more important things to do:  He launched a renewed attack on the World Health Organisation and it leadership for allegedly colluding with China to conceal vital information about the origins of the coronavirus and cut off funding in a bid to emasculate the world body.  It did not matter  that he had, at the onset of the pandemic, praised the WHO and China for their transparency.

    Then, news broke on Memorial Day, May 25, of the death of yet another black man, George Floyd, 46,  at the hands of white police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota.   Such killings are almost routine in America, often at the slightest provocation and sometimes with no provocation whatsoever.

    The initial police report followed a familiar pattern: Floyd had resisted arrest, showed signs of medical distress, was taken to a hospital with signs of trauma to the mouth, and he died.

    A perfunctory investigation would have followed; the officers would have been cleared and would have returned to work after routine suspension with full pay or redeployed to desk duties.  There would have been scattered protests and demonstrations, and defiant expressions of outrage. And matters would have ended here.

    But what the video evidence revealed were the chilling details of a heinous murder.

    George Floyd, suspected of purchasing a pack of cigarettes with a fake $20 bill, is lying on the paved road, held down by two police officers, his face turned to the side, his head wedged by the rear wheel  of a police cruiser, the knee of a third officer jackknifed into his neck while a fourth officer engages horrified bystanders in banter

    Floyd is whimpering and writhing, saying over and over again that he cannot breathe. In his disorientated state, he even calls for his mother who had died several years earlier. Bystanders scream from sheer horror at the murder in progress, but the officers are unmoved.

    Instead, one officer is heard taunting Floyd, “Get up, rogue, and get into the car,” even as a fellow officer’s knee and full weight rested on his neck and remained there for three full minutes after Floyd lost consciousness.  The strangulation lasts more than nine minutes.  By the time a police ambulance arrives, Floyd is dead.

    Throughout this macabre spectacle, the officer resting his knee and weight on Floyd’s neck is a picture of calm, self-possession. It is as if he is doing the most natural thing in the world. Left hand tucked in the pocket of his trousers, he reminds you of a game hunter posing with the lifeless trophy of his safari.   Invoking Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem, the Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson, said that it represented the “banality of evil.”  I call it the “I dey kampe” pose.

    Three days passed and protesters took over the streets before that officer was arrested.

    This was one murder that was going to change the conversation all right and take the spotlight away from the coronavirus, but not in the way I was expecting. For the next six days, anger and fury flowing a vast accretion of wanton police killings of unarmed blacks exploded from coast to coast into violent protest and pitched battles with the police.  Their service vehicles and offices went up in flames, setting the night sky aglow in city after city.

    Even the White House felt the heat and turned off the lights last night.

    Americans who still believe in human solidarity were in one collective resolve saying:  Enough is already too much.  No more.  They had witnessed over the decades and in city after city, a police force enjoined to serve and protect the public, serve and only their own kind and inflict grievous harm on others; they had lived with a system that has turned justice into a game, guaranteed to be won by those who can buy the best lawyers and expert witnesses, a system rigged, from arrest to sentencing, against defendants of color.

    Blacks had already taken a hammering from the coronavirus epidemic.  In city after city, they suffered the most deaths even though constitute only a fraction of the population, not particularly because of any inherent pathology but because American society is structured in such a way that each vulnerability begets another one, until life itself is little than a formidable calendar of vulnerabilities.

    Being black or a person of color in America is the fundamental pre-existing condition from which all other vulnerabilities derive.

    In its 1967 Report commissioned by President Lyndon B. Johnson following the disturbances and civil disorders rooted in racial discrimination that pervaded the United States in the 1960s noted as follows

    “Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans.

    “What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.

    “It is time now to turn with all the purpose at our command to the major unfinished business of this nation. It is time to adopt strategies for action that will produce quick and visible progress. It is time to make good the promises of American democracy to all citizens-urban and rural, white and black, Spanish-surname, American Indian, and every minority group.”

    Submitting that violence and destruction must be ended—in the streets of the ghetto and in the lives of people it called for programmes to be launched on a scale equal to the dimension of the problems and aimed for high impact in the immediate future in order to close the gap between promise and performance. It also called for new initiatives and experiments that can change the system of failure and frustration dominating the ghetto and weakening society.

    That was a different America; gravely flawed, but owning up to those flaws and seeking ways to live and be governed by the noble precepts of its Declaration of Independence:  “We hold these truths . . .”

    The modest changes that followed have since been disavowed, discredited, or abandoned.  The voting rights for which black people fought and died are being eviscerated by the courts though all manner of subterfuge.  Access to the ballot box where black people can exercise the same voting rights for which they were recruited to fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan, and before that in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, is daily being blockaded.

    Fifty-three years after the Kerner Report, racial tensions are as fraught as ever in America.  The American Dream remains just that for the many, sustained by the illusion of access to easy consumer credit.  The world’s wealthiest country is also the only industrialised nation that regards health as a commodity, not a human right.

    The courts and the police and the political process have been weaponised to maintain the status quo.   A mean spirit is abroad.

    All this conflated to light the fuse in Minnesota, culminating in the deadly and destructive conflagration that swept the United States this past week.

    The United States will have to work hard to assert a claim to the trust of its wronged citizens and regain its place in the world.

  • COVID-19 deniers and other matters

    COVID-19 deniers and other matters

    By Sanya Oni

    After my May 12 intervention aptly titled Kogi contrarian and Covid-19, I had assumed I was done with the needless contestation between the state government and the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19. Indeed, if I thought that the infodemic that has now held humanity down for three months running was nearing its cycle, it was on assumption that those who should know would have by now, applied the brakes if only to allow some measure of normalcy return to our lives. Here we are three long dreary months of shutdown later, barely comprehending what is supposed to be the next phase of the battle against the virus, yet condemned to prepare for a “new normal” we know pretty little about outside of the unseemly, ubiquitous masks that have since become a national costume – minus the so-called social distancing rule!

    A lot of course has happened since that outing in reference. The lead agency, the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control, NCDC – has shouldered on. With a total of 60,825 tests in a country of 200 million people by Sunday night of which 9,855 is said to have confirmed, 6,726 active, 2,856 discharged and 273 dead, Nigerians are best placed to judge whether the agency is on track to delivering a Covid-19-free country this millennium!

    In the meantime, the tribe of Covid-19 deniers appears unwilling to let off. One of them, Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River State claims “that the global Coronavirus pandemic has become a full-scale business for some people and that the world is using it to exploit Africa and Nigeria in particular”. He sums up his aversion to the current Covid-19 strategy this way:

    “I can tell you this testing for Coronavirus has gone ecopolitical. In the US for example, it is about the November elections and for some businessmen, it is about more reagents, more money. But for me, it is science, it is reality and because a wrong mentality will give you a wrong reality, I will hold the right mentality. Only contact tracing can help you identify those to be tested. I am a scientist please’’. By the way, Ayade holds a PhD in Environmental Microbiology.

    Now, you know the story of the other Covid-19 denier – Kogi’s Yahaya Bello – who, early last month, turned back the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 team sent to offer the state support. Finally, or so it seems, the state was said to have joined the league of Covid-19 states with the NCDC reporting two index cases for the state on Wednesday last week, a development which the state authorities sensationally denied.

    “Kogi State till this very moment”, the commissioner for health, Saka Haruna Audu, on behalf of the state government insisted, “is COVID-19 free. We have developed full testing capacity and have conducted hundreds of tests so far which have returned negative.

    “We have also continued to insist that we will not be a party to any fictitious COVID-19 claims which is why we do not recognise any COVID-19 test conducted by any Kogite outside the boundaries of the state except those initiated by us.

    Never mind that the family of one of the index cases have since confirmed the case to be so.

    Like I hinted at in my previous outing on the subject, the problem, it seems to me, is not so much about the science or the epidemiology but what is increasing being perceived as mismanagement of the pandemic. For while it might not be shocking to many that security agents have in the last two months killed no less than 18 Nigerians under the guise of enforcing the national lockdown, Nigerians would certainly be alarmed by the sheer number of deaths recorded since the first index case was recorded in Nigeria, and these from deaths unrelated to the virus, oftentimes directly traceable to the unwillingness of our private and public hospitals to accept even routine cases. The other time, I reported on the case of a pregnant woman who, the doctors insisted would have to procure the personal protective equipment for the medical team in charge of her case. She, no doubt, being among the lucky ones got by after shelling out N120,000 for the protective gears. Others have not been that lucky. In this category is Obiefula Anya, said to have succumbed to pneumonia after he was rejected by eight Lagos hospitals for fear he might have contracted COVID-19. The story is particularly interesting because two of the hospitals – the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba and the Federal Medical Centre Ebute-Metta, although supposedly top-notch, allegedly cited lack of bed space and also demanded COVID-19 test result before treatment!

    What of Citizen Joel said to have been rejected by Isolo General Hospital in Lagos over fear of being a COVID-19 patient? As reported by Punch, the man slumped while playing football, and the hospital, thought little of shutting its gates on him fear of Covid-19! There are countless other reported cases of deaths, which though preventable, yet happened because our medics would not lift a finger to help for fear of the virus! Unfortunately, the pattern appears to be the same across the entire national landscape where the fear of the corona virus has since become the beginning of wisdom.

    There has to be a better way to manage the pandemic without sacrificing or as it appears to be the case, crippling the limited options available to citizens to access critical healthcare.

    So much for the dog fight in Kogi. Let me put things the way I see it: I have no problem with the administration in Kogi ranking one public health issue over another. That is entirely its prerogative. There is, however, a world of difference between the denial of the science of the pandemic which the governor and Governor Yahaya Bello and his government prefers, and a healthy dose of skepticism about the pandemic in general given the many variegated but yet unanswered questions about the origins and the nature of the virus. That the Covid-19 denier in Lugard House not only repudiates the science but insists that investigations can only proceed strictly on the terms of his own specious protocols would seem the limit of chicanery.

    By the way, I am still waiting for the doctors and the other frontline health workers in the state to speak out. It is either they are with their beloved governor or against him! Being on his side on the issue of course means that the virus is mere hype and so life can go on as usual; if, as it appears to be the case that the governor is acting ignorant, one expects them, if only for the sake of their safety and those of their loved ones, to insist that the state government put in place, measures tailored to the risk, should the inevitable happen.

    They should speak out now, or forever hold their peace!

  • Corona tale of two governors

    Corona tale of two governors

    By Olakunle Abimbola

    COVID-19 makes.  COVID-19 breaks.  That could be a tad sweeping.  But it might also be the tale of two governors, truly told.

    The one, pre-COVID-19, was building castles in the air; and charming anyone to come see the happy swindle.  Enter, Oyo Governor, Seyi Makinde, aka GSM.

    Indeed, at Oyo’s zenith of the governor as shaman (dubbed “audio governorship” by his no less harsh critics), GSM was “threatening” to surpass, in six months, whatever Abiola Ajimobi, his predecessor, had achieved in eight years!

    But then came COVID-19 which, with a fearful burst, flattened everything.  At first, GSM made a partisan jeer at it all.  Then, he allegedly cropped the virus — allegedly, because not a few of his partisan traducers claim even that was another “audio” stunt.

    Then, one year after, COVID-19 offered the craven apologia: the virus and its ruthless disruptions, had accounted for Makinde’s rather slim report card.

    To boot, COVID-19 has provided, to date, the most devastating anti-Makinde quip! Olodo, Ibadan, harbours Oyo’s biggest COVID-19 isolation and treatment facility.  Accented one way, Olodo could mean “owner of mortar and pestle”, which really is the correct name of that settlement.  But otherwise, it could also mean Olodo: blockhead!

    So, the governor’s cyber-foes have adopted the more irreverent slant, in a savage pun of a photo capturing the governor’s official COVID-19 activity at that facility, courtesy of the governor’s own avid cyber-warriors.

    Enter, the iconic (turned iconoclastic) photo: GSM as “Olodo Ibadan” (Ibadan gubernatorial blockhead)!  Propaganda gives, propaganda takes!

    So early, Makinde’s restless propaganda chicken is coming home to roost!  Still, he has his job cut out, now that one out of a four-year term is gone!

    Well, Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu (BOS), Makinde’s Lagos counterpart, has taken a less upbeat route, with diametrically opposite, startling results.

    Whereas COVID-19 has, well, crippled GSM, it has given BOS rare wings to soar; not by jingling propaganda, but by trackable deeds.  COVID-19 makes, COVID-19 breaks!

    Yet, BOS was a victim of an often fickle electorate, that yearns for the governor as shaman; failing which they push a democratic right to, no end, traduce and abuse.

    BOS took over at the nadir of the Akinwunmi Ambode collapse; and the urban decay that held much of Lagos in thrall.

    Lagos was an extensive and oppressive garbage dump, no thanks to Ambode’s failed bid at refuse-clearing reforms, a chore that gobbled his second term, but which not a few claimed equated fixing what wasn’t broken.

    To be fair though, that could just be glib counter-jive by party powers and principalities, who wrestled Ambode to a vicious pin-fall.

    Then the roads!  They were in a complete shambles, no thanks to Ambode’s loud dissonance, from a hurried retreat from power, leaving a long trail of dead dreams.

    To make matters worse, it was the height of the rainy season, hopeless for road repairs.  But who cares?  If BOS couldn’t face the heat, he had better get the hell out of the kitchen!  Still, a governor is no shaman.

    Then came the brutal taunts: Atoka of Lagos, Point-and-kill Governor, et al, all in  saucy mirth, at poor BOS’s expense!  That chilled the zippy, zap-py, zealous photos of his earliest gubernatorial days!

    But then, came COVID-19, and BOS came onto his own — dramatically for the better, unlike GSM’s, whose story changed for the worse.

    Before then, however, Lagos was becoming progressively cleaner, but hardly anyone noticed.  No, not as clean as at the apex of the Babatunde Fashola sanitation reforms; but far cleaner than at the Ambode collapse.

    In truth, BOS would have to ruthlessly deal with that era’s lingering decadence — Lagos denizens turning high road medians into refuse dumps; and waste-clearing trucks forced to work by this absurd “new normal”.

    Until the governor clamps down on those involved, Lagos might not achieve the relative cleanliness of the Fashola days.  On that, BOS can use Neighbourhood Watch/Amotekun secret cells to nab and make big scapegoats, of these environmental criminals.

    Still, the real deal was dealing with COVID-19!  It earned BOS soaring respect.

    Yes, Lagos remains the national epicentre.  As at May 30, Lagos lugs 4, 755, out of the national COVID-19 burden of 9, 855 (48 per cent).

    Prof. Akinlola Abayomi, the Lagos Health commissioner and “field commander” of the fierce Lagos anti-Coronavirus campaign, says that might be because Lagos had done more tests than any other state, including the FCT, and its federal might.

    Yet, there is hardly any panic, matching the local scale of the pandemic — or any visible panic at all.

    On the contrary, thanks to BOS (“Incident Commander”, in Lagos COVID-19 lingo) and his able cabinet’s deft response to the virus, many Lagosians thumb their nose at the pandemic, with their seeming near-contempt for COVID-19 safety protocols, in their daily hustle.

    As Fashola did with Ebola in 2014, a sure-footed BOS is leading Nigeria’s gubernatorial challenge against COVID-19, in concert with the corresponding federal agencies.

    The real good news, however, is systemic: Lagos has, from 1999, continued to hone its civil service and political bureaucracies, for quality service delivery, in good and bad seasons.

    No, Lagos is no utopia — far from it.  There are still a whole lot to be done.  But with Ebola and COVID-19 handling, it is moving in directions not a few would wish the Federal Government had moved, since 1999.  Had that been, Nigeria could have been far better prepared for this COVID-19 blitz.  But it could have been worse!

    Still, there is life after COVID-19, which suggests other areas BOS should face, as he goes full blast into his second year.

    The Okada-Keke Marwa (indeed, general yellow buses) menace isn’t done and dusted.  Fredrick Oladehinde, the Lagos Transport commissioner, has revealed the roadmap to shutting, for good, Okada and Keke Marwa from Lagos roads.

    That is welcome — and should be vigorously pursued. Too many Okada and Keke Marwa rascals still ply major highways, even belting against the traffic.

    The strategic solution, however, would be to take the market away.  That would be by rail, which can, at a burst, move thousands, particularly at the busy opening and closing business hours.

    With rail sweeping away the commuter market, no one would tell these ultra-micro shuttle players the market had closed.

    Which is why BOS should ensure the 2021 completion and operation deadline, of the Lagos rail Blue Line.  Then, quick work should follow on the proposed Red Line and others, aside from the Mile 2-Badagry end of the Blue Line, all by PPP funding.

    Talking of deadlines, BOS should also complete the Epe-Odo Ajogun road project, halted at Mojoda, though Odo-Ajogun, border town with Ogun State, is only the next town, in concert with the laudable philosophy of completing all Ambode-era projects.

    Has COVID-19 made BOS and sunk GSM?  No.  For both, one year is gone, out of four.  So, it’s time to rally: either to consolidate winking success, or fob off looming failure.

    BOS should be especially careful.  At this stage of own tenure, Ambode was near-cruising, having fobbed off his initial challenges.  But that didn’t stop his miserable crumble, no thanks to avoidable hubris.

    BOS can’t afford such miserable encore — at least for the sake of his Lagos electors.

  • Lessons from Ayade

    Lessons from Ayade

    By Gabriel Amalu

    Was it compassion or emotion that drew tears from Governor Ben Ayade as he talked about the poor in Cross River State last week? If it was compassion, we celebrate him as a leader.

    But if he was merely emotional, then we can be sure, he would get over it, so the cruelty against the poor will go on. Perhaps, we should give Ayade the benefit of doubt for he has set up a committee to lift the burden of taxation on the backs of the poor.

    If Governor Ayade truly has compassion for the poor in his state, he should study the provisions of Chapter II of the 1999 constitution (as amended) to grasp the full standards of a compassionate government.

    Any leader who abides by those provisions on the “fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy” qualifies as a compassionate leader.

    But what is the difference between compassion and emotion? According to Advanced English Dictionary-online, the word compassion means: “the humane quality of understanding the sufferings of others and wanting to do something about it.”

    On the other hand, the same dictionary defines emotion as: “any strong feeling.” Such strong feeling can make one to cry or laugh.

    For instance, watching a single movie can elicit the two divergent feelings, as the scenes unfold, and at the end of it, the spectator would relapse to his usual self and engage in other things. Again, a good actor can also exhibit the two divergent emotions while portraying a character.

    So, in a single movie, a character could laugh or cry, as part of the act; and of course that has nothing to do with the real feeling of the actor.

    So, was Governor Ben Ayade acting a script, to impress the viewers? If we are to believe him, Ayade, is for real. He said: “I am not wired for this insensitivity to a weaker person.

    I never knew that five years into office as governor, I will still find someone living in a thatched house in Cross River”.

    Well, while living in a thatched house could be a metaphor for poverty, there are millions living in houses covered by corrugated iron sheets, who are as poor as the famous church rats.

    According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), on poverty and inequality, from September 2018 to October 2019, about 40% of Nigerians lived below its poverty line of $1 dollar per day. That approximated to about 82.9 million Nigerians.

    With the global pandemic, otherwise known as COVID-19, making a mincemeat of the poor in our society, the figure of the poor in our country would have gone a notch higher in 2020. While the poor would continue to be amongst us, Ayade, is saying they should not be Cross Riverians.

    But if we are to rely on the available statistics, there are still many Cross Riverians caught in the web of poverty despite the strides of the professor turned politician.

    According to a media report, there are about 230,000 households who are beneficiaries of the monthly Conditional Cash Transfer of N5,000, to the poorest of the poor, in 2019.

    The report says that Bolinwo Ofegobi, the Cross River State Coordinator of Youth Employment and Social Support Operations, YESSO is working to capture at least one million poor beneficiaries of the programme in the state before the end of 2020.

    So, Governor Ayade should be distressed, that after five years on the saddle, the number of the poor, in his state, is still very high.

    But of course, Cross River is not amongst the poorest of the poor in the index of the poorest states in Nigeria. The states in the northwest and the northeast bears the medals for that unenviable positions.

    According to the Nigerian Living Standards Survey (NLSS) released by NBS, nine of 10 poorest states are in the northern part of Nigeria.

    Some of the indices used to measure the poverty index include access to education, health and basic services, employment, assets and income.

    These wide ranging socio-economic factors, are tested against the sustainable development indicators, to determine the living standards and the level of poverty in the country.

    As stated in the report by the Cross River State agency and corroborated by the NBS report, the majority of the poor are in the rural areas of the states.

    Of note, Ofogebi noted that in trying to garner data of the most vulnerable in the rural communities, some of the leaders insisted that their names must be included in the lists before the officials are allowed to garner the data.

    Of course, that should be a lesson for the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, which generated the controversial lists for the Controversial Cash Transfers in states across the country.

    For Governor Ayade, giving a tax rebate is one sure way to alleviate poverty in his state. No doubt, that measure is commendable, more so, for the reasons we all know; that the entrepreneur in Nigeria, personally provides most of the essential services to stay in business.

    These include generating electric power, borehole, private transportation, and even security. That is why many small scale business are always struggling, and when the burden of taxation is added, then, it is a matter of time before the business dies.

    So, we commend Governor Ayade to other state governors. The Kingdom of Dubai, one of the kingdoms that make up the United Arab Emirates, is one country that practices no taxation, as a state policy, to stimulate businesses.

    That has paid off handsomely, as the country is the preferred destination for many businesses. So, taxation can be used both as an incentive and a disincentive to stimulate trade and businesses. Of course, taxation is not bad in itself, but tax holidays can be used to buoy up new businesses.

    While commending Ayade, for his concern for the small scale businesses, we urge him to back his plans with laws where necessary to entrench it.

    If he has the compassion, he should ensure that governance, in Cross River State, is formulated in accordance the provisions of Chapter II of the 1999 constitution (as amended).

    A fervent practice of the provisions of the said Chapter II, would aid the socio-economic development of his state, nay Nigeria.

    Section 14(1), in Chapter II, provides: “The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a state based on the principles of democracy and social justice.” Sub-section 2, further provides: “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” Perhaps, to govern compassionately, should be the lessons from a Governor’s cry on television.

     

  • Ibrahim Gambari’s career move

    Ibrahim Gambari’s career move

    By Olatunji Dare

    When President Olusegun Obasanjo named retired General Abdullahi Mohammed his Chief of Staff shortly after taking office in 1999, the event caused hardly a stir.

    It was a carryover from Obasanjo’s military days and stemmed from a desire to have as his gatekeeper a fellow military man who would control access to his principal, organize his workload and workflow with the discipline and efficiency Obasanjo had, according to his contemporary General TY Danjuma, brought to his duties as Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, when General Murtala Muhammad was Head of State,

    Before his retirement, General Abdullahi was the well—regarded director-general of the National Security Organisation. That position may also have informed his selection as Obasanjo’s chief of staff, with a remit to keep a watchful eye on the shop, monitor and keep a tight rein on official communications, and help manage efficiently what may well be a president’s most precious asset: his time.

    Considering the myriad of issues competing for the president’s attention at any given moment, that was no easy task.

    Nevertheless, the position was that of a factotum. It had no place in the Constitution. It was a creation of the president and existed at his pleasure.   Gen. Abdullahi performed only such tasks as Obasanjo assigned him, and Obasanjo left no room for any of his appointees to entertain any doubt about who was in charge.

    There is a school of thought that sees the chief of staff as a fixer-in-residence for his principal, the fellow who does the dirty work or absorbs the blame. That is not Obasanjo’s conception of the role. Obasanjo needs no fixer.  Wherever any fixing is warranted, he does it himself and moves on.  Tony Anenih was the PDP’s fixer, not Obasanjo’s.

    Gen Abdullahi certainly knew his place.  His modest, self-effacing persona perfectly complemented that of his principal’s hand-on, often-in-your face style. It is a measure of his suitability and Obasanjo[s judgement thereof that he lasted so long in that office without stirring controversy and without scandal

    Nor did the attentive public entertain any illusions as to the place of the president’s chief of staff in the scheme of things.  There was no dancing, no rejoicing in the streets on Gen Abdullahi’s appointment and no newspaper advertisements congratulating him on the occasion. After all, Obasanjo’s predecessor as elected president, Shehu Shagari, also had a chief of staff, but the fellow is remembered today mainly for changing his name from Michael Prest to Mikhail or Mukaila Prest.

    The usual stakeholders placed no notices in the media remarking Obasanjo’s patriotism, wisdom and commitment to national unity in appointing their illustrious, dutiful, high-achieving son, daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, course mate, club member, to the exalted position and pledging in consequence their unalloyed loyalty, unflinching support, and wholehearted cooperation.

    Obasanjo’s laid-back successor Umaru Yar’Adua had no chief of staff, only a (chief?) private secretary, the spectral David Edevbie, planted in the Presidency by the calculating former Governor of Delta State, James Ibori, later a model inmate and now global chair of the alumni of Her Britannic Majesty’s Correctional Facilities System.

    Edevbie had served as a commissioner for finance in Ibori’s Administration with great distinction that few were surprised at his promotion to the strategic post of private secretary to the President.  Edevbie’s orders, it was rumored at the time, included monitoring closely and reporting on the status of the EFCC’s ongoing case to bring Ibori to justice on charges of larceny on a scale almost beyond belief, and on Ibori’s counter offensive, aided by police Inspector-General Mike Okiro to take the EFCC’s chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, out of reckoning.

    President Goodluck Jonathan had two chiefs of staff, Mike Oghiadomhe, a former deputy governor of Edo State, and retired Brig-Gen Jones Arogbofa.  Neither of them made a difference in his bumbling performance.  I have it on the highest authority that Jonathan rarely mastered his briefing papers and often dozed off at meetings he had himself convened to discuss important issues.   Too much carousing the previous night with characters who had no business being in such a hallowed space, I was told.

    President Muhammadu Buhari revived the office of Chief of Staff on taking office, and it quickly became perhaps the most powerful position in the cabinet.  Kyari was not just chief of staff to the president, he was chief of the President’s cabinet.  Buhari himself indicated that much when he directed ministers wishing to see him to clear first with Kyari.

    A chief of staff with that kind of remit certainly suited Buhari’s laid-back approach and what some have interpreted as his predilection for reigning rather than governing. But could Buhari have set out to create another locus of power beside himself?

    Or did Kyari, seeing an opening, accumulate so much power to himself that, at the time he died last month from coronavirus disease, not a few Nigerians blamed the country’s woes on him, believing that he was for all practical purposes the one minding the shop?

    To reframe the matter:  Does the office make the holder, or is the holder that makes the office?

    Chief Ernest Shonekan was the designated “Head of Government” in military president Ibrahim  Babangida’s Transition Council, charged expressly with completing what remained of the stalled transition to democratic rule.  Even under a military rule reputed for its duplicity, and despite its contrived ambiguity, the remit was elastic enough for a creative and well-meaning incumbent with an eye on history to pursue faithfully.

    Not Shonekan.  Soon after the Council went into business, its members discovered that Shonekan merely initialed their memos and forwarded them to Babangida without comment, Information Secretary Uche Chukwumerije, told me.  Subsequently, they sent their memos directly to Babangida.  Shonekan had in effect consigned himself to irrelevance in the scheme of things.

    On the other hand, there have been unelected officials who, operating within the most circumscribed framework and holding unremarkable positions, gathered by accretion a great deal of power to themselves – power and influence well beyond what they most liberal remit could have sanctioned – and deployed it to change the entire landscape for better or worse.

    One of the best illustrations of that phenomenon is the subject of Robert Caro’s 1974 engrossing biography, The Power Broker:  Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.  Robert Moses, a city planner, served as Parks Commissioner and in several identical posts in New York for more than three decades.     By means subtle and brazen, he outmaneuvered City Hall, elected mayors and state assemblies and state governors in making metropolitan New York what it is today for better and for worse.

    All of which brings us to the appointment of Professor Ibrahim Gambari as Chief of Staff to the president, to succeed Abba Kyari.

    From much of the commentary that has followed, and I suspect from his personal correspondence, you would think that Buhari had abdicated and yielded the office to Gambari.  Even the Ilorin Royal Court, of which Gambari is a scion, has weighed in, congratulating Buhari on the wisdom of the choice.  Great things are expected of him.

    Personally, given his dazzling résumé, I think the genial professor is overqualified for the position.  He has no business being anyone’s chief of staff.  He should have thanked the president and declined.  But he probably subscribes to the tradition that if the president asks you for a lawful and not unreasonable favour, you should not refuse.  Plus, he probably sees it as the latest in a very long line of calls to service.

    Those who expect him to work miracles will be disappointed.  From his media interview, it is clear he regards the office as one of modest possibilities.  He will probably have to work around the edges to invest the Presidency with firmer purpose, clarity and direction, especially as regards domestic policy.

    That would be no small achievement.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Agric ministry’s ‘Star Wars’

    Agric ministry’s ‘Star Wars’

    Sanya Oni

     

    Again, thanks to Covid-19, many Nigerians may have missed out on two running stories, somewhat parallel, involving a section of the federal bureaucracy for the better part of last week.

    The first, a relatively innocuous incident in which a group of aggrieved contractors were said to have massed at the gates of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) to protest a lingering N17bn debt.

    The second, perhaps more earth-shaking, is the query served on the permanent secretary, Ministry of Science and Technology, Mohammed Umar Bello, by the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation, Folashade Yemi-Esan over an alleged N48 billion contractual liability despite the budgetary provision.

    While both stories appear dissimilar on the surface, it took a closer scrutiny to reveal that each actually represent the obverse side of the other.

    The first, a typical sad story of the local businessmen entangled in the web of a monstrous, indulgent bureaucracy; the second, a window into the inscrutable decadence of the civil service institution, particularly the collapse of the controls which traditionally set the institution apart.

    It started when a group of contractors under the aegis of the Concerned Unpaid 2018 Contractors, numbering 50, massed at the headquarters of the ministry where they blocked the entrance leading to the minister’s office on Wednesday.

    Their demand: that the ministry settles all outstanding debts owed them – most of them since 2018. Spokesman of the group Daniel Mozie, says “you’ll be shocked to know that some contractors are dead; many others have sold or mortgaged their houses and their creditors are on their neck.

    Many can’t pay house rents and school fees for their kids or access medication”. Call it a familiar story of how the bureaucracy ruins the best of men!

    The other is no less straightforward: a case of the ministry’s top gun being called out to explain how a debt, for which the government had duly provisioned, could not be settled as at and when due.

    The two, as it turns out, find intersection in the role of one powerful individual – permanent secretary, Mohammed Bello, now of the science and technology ministry who, it is being alleged, not only got the ministry needlessly entangled in the contractor mess but also allegedly filched from the cookey jar.

    In a private memo now leaked, the Head of Service had demanded explanation (query) from Bello why the latter did not pay the eligible contractors which led to the ministry having an outstanding contractual liability in the sum of N48,429,543,895,722.

    Part of the memo read: “Under your leadership as the accounting officer, the ministry utilised the entire 2019 first quarter release of N7,737,208, 135.18 to pay for the 2018 contracts that were fully funded in 2018 which constitutes virement without authority.”

    Not that alone, he was accused of giving out seven deep drilling rigs for borehole procured by the ministry at N1.3 billion to some unnamed individuals under “fraudulent arrangements.”

    The seven deep drilling rigs for borehole which were reportedly purchased at an average cost of N300 million were said to have been done without recourse to the Federal Executive Council only to be handed out to some individuals under fraudulent arrangements, without the approval of the minister”. He was accused of failing to return one of the rigs linked to him “despite several written reminders”.

    The Head of Service further would further charge: “You misapplied the intervention funds approved for the purchase of strategic grains and the establishment of the Rural Grazing Area Settlements in violation of extent Financial Regulations; two of such misapplications are the use of N2.026,838,775.25 to pay contractors and execute programmes from the funds released for emergency procurement of strategic grains which is unrelated to the purpose of the funds.

    He was given a 72-hour ultimatum to respond to the weighty allegations.

    Expectedly, the embattled permanent secretary has denied all the allegations. Describing the allegations as “baseless, completely concocted, unfounded, without facts, malicious and calculated to deceive”, he urged the Head of Service to “kindly note that we have been invited, interrogated and cleared by the EFCC and ICPC on this particular matter after glaring facts were presented to them”.

    He also wrote: “I state that contractors were duly paid. The allegation of contractors not been (sic) paid is totally false.

    All contractors whose contract was captured in the 2018 budgetary allocation were paid in accordance with budgetary releases.

    However, contractors whose contracts are ongoing were rolled over as ongoing. Rollover capital projects are not new in contract management”.

    In other words, the contractors might have well been from the ghost-town!

    Given that some of the allegations are criminal in nature, I suspect that the last has not been heard on the matter.

    Suffice to say that questions remain, not least the one of what to do with the contractors, but the location of the rigs on which humongous public funds were spent.

    In the meantime, the FMARD’s Director of Information, Theodore Ogaziechi, could only pray for the patience of the contractors, pointing out that the liabilities were “inherited”.

    Said he: “On behalf of the agriculture ministry,  I would like to state that the ministry is not unmindful of the outstanding liabilities owed to contractors, and to also affirm that the honourable ministers, the permanent secretary and the management team share in the agony of the contractors which has informed their agitation”.

    The officials, he assured, are “in the process of compiling and verifying all outstanding contract liabilities with a view to facilitate their payment”.

    Appealing for patience, understanding and cooperation of the contractors, he said this became necessary to enable the relevant officials “complete the process and forward the outcome to the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning for further action.”

    Well said. However, if that seems any consolation to the lot many of whom have been thrown into penury, that appeal obviously begs the question of how the allocation voted to settle those liabilities could not be made during the applicable financial year more so when the budgetary release for 2018 is said to be near 100 percent.

    It raises, in a more fundamental sense, the question of where the funds went and the extent to which extant controls on funds utilization were compromised.

    For now, as the scriptures is wont to say, we know only in part. One part says the debts were duly provided for. The other claims that the contractors covered under the relevant budgetary vote were duly settled.

    For the sake of the masses huddled at the gate, we need a truth panel to unwrap the mystery at the agriculture ministry.

    The days ahead promises to be interesting.

  • Supreme hubris

    Supreme hubris

    Olakunle Abimbola

     

    From its apex, the Nigerian judiciary, slowly but surely, cascades down the nadir of polite society.

    But only it can’t see it: trapped, as it were, in its own frothing, intoxicating and all-consuming legalese.

    Supreme Court, supreme hubris, supreme joke?  That is clearly irreverent.  Indeed, it is harsh.

    But the supreme crunch would dawn, when even the most placid and reticent, of genteel citizens, start upbraiding the Supreme Court, as some supreme curse.

    That would be the day!  We hope — and pray — that day never comes!

    Still, that would seem the troubling route the courts are heading, if the apex court continues to hoist crass technicality, over and above substantial justice.

    That would appear clear, from that court’s May 8 voiding, via 7-0 verdict, of the 5 December 2019 conviction of former Abia Governor, Orji Uzor Kalu (OUK) and Ude Udeogu, the Abia State Government House director of finance, during the OUK governorship (1999-2007).

    True, the Supreme Court only ordered a fresh trial, based on the technicality that the judge ought to have quit the case, though nearing conclusion at the high court, the moment he was promoted Justice of the Court of Appeal.

    That such technicality could knock off a long-drawn case, that rippled with so much litigant bad faith to stall and escape justice, earned the ire of not a few.

    But much more: that casual but costly technicality could have dealt a near-fatal blow on the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015.  Yet ACJA was enacted to checkmate cynics that apply procedural stalling, to escape justice.

    ACJA, therefore, inspired the fiat, from the president of the Court of Appeal, that empowered the judge to complete the case.

    But now, no thanks to the Supreme Court’s May 8 verdict, the courts may yet endure a deluge of appeals from past convicts, armed with fresh anti-ACJA technicality, hot, fresh and smoking, from the apex court itself.

    Talk of a Supreme Court, bristling with supreme pride, crowning itself the supreme cog, in the war against procedural bad faith in Nigerian courts — hardly the apex court’s finest hour!

    Though the danger of unravelling courts looms larger, as the seconds tick and days pass, the ghoul of a self-distracting judiciary would date back, even if faintly, to the early years of Nigeria’s flag independence.

    Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in The Travails of Democracy and the Rule of Law (Adventures in Power Book Two), recorded Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, the first indigenous Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), as making reckless partisan comments, at a 1960 special luncheon to inaugurate Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe as Nigeria’s Governor-General.

    There the CJN, and the dominion’s new Prime Minister, formed a tag team to dismiss the office of Leader of Opposition as some parliamentary scam, to the chagrin of the international community present, as Awo returned fire, tit-for-tat.

    On 29 November 1960 (less than two months after independence), Dr. Taslim Elias, a future CJN but then federal minister of Justice and Attorney-General, bossed debates in the House of Representatives, on how the central parliament could summarily shut down — and take over — a recalcitrant region (read Western Region), using the law as a mere accomplice.

    That appeared a parliamentary simulation of the 1962 phony emergency in the Western Region, brewed in that same parliament, which would signal the beginning of the end for the 1st Republic.

    A controversial 1963 Awo conviction, CJN Ademola’s post-conviction manoeuvres to procure Awo a cynical pardon for humiliating partisan terms, and a January 1966 coup that buried that republic, didn’t exactly leave the judiciary smelling like roses.

    Yet, when Dr. Elias (as second-term AG and federal commissioner for Justice, under Gen. Yakubu Gowon) was, in 1972, plucked from his twin job as Professor and Dean of Law at the University of Lagos, and made CJN, it was the legal gown come to boss the judicial town!  But then, both gown and town boasted high societal awe.  Hardly any more!

    Still, at his removal in 1975, as part of the post-Gowon purge, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, the new junta’s second-in-command, said of CJN Elias and his sack, in Not My Will, Obasanjo’s immediate post-regime memoirs:

    “His legal competence was not in doubt and we also acknowledged that he was a great academician,” he wrote but “his management competence and integrity to administer the judiciary was called to question, especially as a result of the apparent muddle, confusion and ineptitude by the judiciary previously.”

    Now, the notoriously narcissist Obasanjo, he of tumbling and often meaningless adjectives, is fairly slammed for conflicting executive rashness with supreme wisdom, for most of his long power years.

    CJN Elias was clearly a personal victim of that hare-brained headiness, that drove the Murtala-era purges. That would explain his rash sack, and near-instant push, for the World Court at The Hague, of which Elias would later become president.

    Yet, as a class, the judiciary that Sir Darnley Alexander, then Chief Judge of Cross Rivers State, was picked to head was a tad lower in public estimation, compared with 1960.

    Then came the 2nd Republic, and the Supreme Court, and its twelve-two-thirds controversial verdict, helped to give that short-lived republic (1979-1983) a huge legitimacy challenge, which it never really surmounted; just as the courts were part of the Babangida June 12, 1993 presidential annulment mess.

    All through these periods, however, a section of the judiciary, galvanized by the exploits of the likes of Chukwudifu Oputa (JSC), Kayode Esho (JSC) and Dr. Akinola Aguda, one-time Chief Justice of Botswana, fine jurists in whom brilliance and character cohered, rallied to stay the course.

    Still, with 1999’s democracy return would come new decadence, with the judiciary slipping further into the bog; and the courts, no more than bugs, in the mind of many.

    That climaxed with the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) conviction, on 18 April 2019, of former CJN Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen, for false asset declaration.  Now, the CJN as convict, was a new low!

    But that wasn’t even the news.  The dreary news was that the flower of the Bar and a section of the Bench rallied, via procedural technicalities, to shield one of their own from justice.

    That was in violent breach of the solemn social contract that catapulted them as sacred votaries, in the immaculate shrine of Justice.  Indeed, until things turned nasty, a section of the Bar, with some roaring silks, was goading the embattled CJN to ignore the CCT!

    But it was ACJA that saved the day — not because the CJN was convicted but because justice was served.  It wouldn’t have made any difference, had the CJN been discharged and acquitted.

    Rather, the heart-warming lesson was never again, in our land, would crass technicality obstruct or trump justice!  But see how pyrrhic the Supreme Court has made that seeming breakthrough, with its supreme hubris — sorry, verdict — of May 8!

    Each time the judiciary ruffles societal feathers, with controversial verdicts, some all-knowing lawyers come barging in, with frothing and arcane technicalities — bravo!

    But the Supreme Court, by its verdicts, should ingrain substantial justice, rather than glory in technicalities. Any contrary path is nothing but expressway to self-ruin.

  • Governors as dictators

    Governors as dictators

    By Gabriel Amalu

    The coronavirus pandemic has provided an excuse for democratically elected governors to wear the toga of dictatorship, and act arbitrarily without remorse. The most assertive of the recent undemocratic conducts took place in Rivers State where Governor Nyesom Wike, by an executive fiat, directed bulldozers to pull down a private property allegedly used for an unlawful purpose. In making a case against the owner, an indigene of Rivers State, Wike acted as the accuser, the prosecutor, the judge and the executioner.

    To justify his conduct, Wike alleged that the owner of the hotel broke the laws of Rivers State, when he opened the gate of his hotel for business in disobedience of the lockdown order issued to stop the spread of corona virus pandemic. Subsequently, it was alleged that the hotel was a haven for cultists, amongst other high-level criminality. No doubt, the allegations against the hotel owner are very serious, and if the accusations are true, many members of the public would condemn the owner, especially because of the debilitating effects of such criminal activities on the society.

    But that will not exculpate the governor and indeed the state, should the aggrieved owner of the hotel approach the court for redress. Of course, Wike as a lawyer knows that however well founded the accusations against an accused maybe, he is deemed innocent until he is proven guilty, under the 1999 constitution (as amended) and the criminal laws of our country. So why did Governor Wike not resort to the law instead of arbitrariness in dealing with the alleged criminal infractions of the accused person?


    Perhaps, because by virtue of the immunity clause in the 1999 constitution (as amended), the governor cannot be sued in his personal capacity because of the infraction. In Abacha vs Fawehinmi (2000) F.W.L.R. 594, Pt. 4; the Supreme Court per Ogundare JSC held: “The immunity granted under section 267 of the 1979 constitution relates to civil or criminal proceedings where a suit is commenced against such an official in his personal capacity. It does not apply where the official, as in the instant case is sued in his official capacity.”

    So, the owner of hotel may have a case to claim damages against the state, even though he may have infringed the regulation of the lock down and other sundry crimes as alleged. And the courts, may be persuaded to award huge damages against the state because of the manifest dictatorial action of the governor in complete disregard to the rule of law. If the governor was mindful of the rule of law, nothing stops the governor from seeking an order of court to confiscate the property, if there is a law that permits that.

    In Ohadugba vs Garba (2000) F.W.L.R. 2738-2739, the Court of Appeal held: “Where chattels were destroyed or damaged, the following rules have been evolved for compensating the party damnified: (a) Where the goods are destroyed by the wrongful act of the defendants, the measure of damages is the value of the goods at the time of their destruction and in proper case, plus such further sum as would compensate the owner for the loss of use or earnings and the inconvenience of being without the goods during the period reasonably required for replacement.”

    In the northern part of our country, especially, Kano State, the governors are exhibiting their dictatorial conducts in the handling of the almajiri saga. Some of them treat the children like sh*t, while some others treat them as disposal items. In a manner that may come to haunt the entire country, the children many of whom may have been infected by the coronavirus pandemic, are being dispersed to every part of the country like an essential commodity. After exploiting the children as agents of electoral malpractices and mayhem in their states, they are now being exported to other states as purveyors of the fearful pandemic.

    Of course, this malice laden behaviours of the northern governors have raised worries across the country. For some, the dispersal of the almajiris to the states in the southern part of the country, is a subtle way to export religious fanaticism and fundamentalism. Some others are almost getting paranoid, with the claim that it is geared to extend Boko Haram to the southern part of the country. While these fears may be unfounded, it is worrisome that democratically elected governors would act as dictators, in treating bona fide citizens of the country.

    If the country has lawfully instituted a nation-wide inter-state lockdown, because a pandemic is ravaging the country, under what regulations or laws are the governors and their agents relying on, to ship the almajiri children resident in their states to other states, like disposal items? If the reason is not to undermine the security and public health status of the other states, what is the reason behind the ongoing dispersal of the almajiri children to the states who never engaged in that hideous practice anytime in the past?

    After breeding the almajiri monster, why further treat the children as wastes? Where is the democratic credential of the governors engaged in these unlawful activities?  In these states, are there no laws made to protect the rights of the children? Does it mean that the Universal Basic Education laws which provides that children must be in school from age six until they are 15 years, by which time they would have undergone the primary education and the basic three level in secondary school, not applicable to these haemorrhaging states?

    Of course, this column has severally complained about the immoral and patently unlawful conduct of the state governments in the north, which allowed the deprivations of impressionable children, on the altar of religious evangelism, long before this pandemic. Well, according to the governor of Plateau State, Solomon Lalong, the northern governors have agreed to end the Almajiri system, before this pandemic. While that agreement is a welcome development, the manner they are effecting it is most unconscionable and unlawful. If they agreed to end the scourge, the children should be enrolled in schools and vocational centres for them to attempt a catch-up, after the wasted years.

    Clearly, it is criminal to disperse these children, by allowing them to be loaded into tankers built to convey chemical products, trucks used to convey animals, and those purposely built to convey building materials, just to beat the enforcement of the lock-down regulations. Indeed, it is the height of malice and wickedness, to encourage or allow the migration of these hapless citizens, who may have been exposed to the corona virus pandemic to other states, without regard to public health. The governors involved have failed woefully as state chief executives.

  • Corona Ramadan

    Corona Ramadan

    By Olakunle Abimbola

    After Corona Easter, comes Corona Ramadan.  The globe and its major faiths are locked in the vice grip of COVID-19!

    If science is slow at grabbing a vaccine, are faiths any faster in procuring a cure?

    Indeed!  COVID-19 is proving a ruthless faith iconoclast as any other, shunting aside traditions, hitherto observed for eons!

    No thanks to social distancing and crowd control, Easter 2020 endured subdued celebration of significant landmarks: Palm Sunday, Passion Week, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday — beyond virtual caricatures, by the richer congregations.

    Ramadan 2020, now on its last lap, is hobbled by a similar fate.

    That has bucked much of its communalism, its fast-season faith advocacy, its proud holy Ramadan lectures, its Iftar, shared dinners, after fasting from sunrise to sundown — and who knows, if it lingers?  It’s eid prayers (and post-Ramadan gaiety and merriment), all big crowd pullers, in the name of the faith!

    Like Easter 2020, Ramadan (and Eid-el-Fitri) 2020 would be like no other.

    Now, a pared down Ramadan, perhaps much more than a pared down Lent, holds practical problems.

    On the doctrinal plane, Lent seems comparatively subdued as Ramadan is unabashedly boisterous.  As kids, we used to tease our Muslim friends about “their noise” at Ramadan, contrasted to the “loud quiet”, during the Christian Lent.

    Indeed, in our mind of childhood, we verily believed a Christian that publicized his fasting, even during Lent, wilfully starved himself, with absolutely no spiritual reward.

    And pronto, with childhood innocence that harboured neither bile nor spite, we dismissed Ramadan as one noisy racket — with Ramadan-push inflation to boot! — en route to rating the Lent, up and above the Ramadan!

    How innocently childish — comparing faiths founded on different doctrinal pivots!

    Still, from that childhood bias has come ample respect, in adult years, for sundry faiths: Christianity and Islam — and even the much traduced African traditional faiths.

    Though illogical institutional biases — no thanks to colonial and sundry hegemonic narratives — have traduced African faiths, we know every faith (African, Asian, Judeo-Christian or Arab) is a spiritual pathway, to further appreciate God Almighty, and grapple with nature.

    But away from faith pride and prejudices!  Back to Ramadan 2020!

    Ramadan segues into day-to-day realities, and the eminent place of compassion and empathy, in it all.

    Life may be two-fold: rich or poor, plenitude or scarcity, love or hate, satiation or starvation, high or lowly.

    But Ramadan pushes rare egalitarianism powered by common humanity; hinged in the spiritual but made practical in the secular, all owned by the community, over a 30-day stretch.

    Hunger may be a clear personal, nay biological, need.  But when more than a proportionate poor grapple with it, it becomes a clear social menace.

    Fasting may be the quiet tapping into the pangs of hunger, for spiritual fortification; and seeking heavenly munificence.

    Ramadan, however,  propels that strictly spiritual chore as boisterous communal business, mandatory for all Muslim adults, except those with medical conditions, those with travelling commitments and females with monthly cycle challenges.

    It could, therefore, well be a spiritual guide come to manage all-common human and communal challenges.

    From the daily Tarawih Ramadan evening prayers, otherwise known as hashr (which, somewhat corrupted, the Yoruba faithful call “ashamu”), to sahuur, the pre-fast meal (which the Yoruba call “sari”), to Iftar, the after-fast dinner, everything is public; everything is boisterous — a happy celebration of the faith, in a season of common hunger, by the rich or the poor.

    Proudly public too are the Ramadan lectures; Koranic recitations, household and communal, which drive the Ramadan season injunction for deep introspection; the Tefsir Koranic tutorials in neighbourhood mosques, between 12 noon and 2 pm, when Ramadan hunger pangs probably bites most; and sundry Islamic proselytization, which comes with the fast territory.

    To be sure, all these still go on at Ramadan 2020, at least in some virtual form.  But for the first time in contemporary living memory, the soul of the season, the ardent and devout community of the faithful, is markedly absent.  It’s a Ramadan like no other!

    Yet, Ramadan could have been tailor-made for such a global health emergency, and vanishing opportunities, in the unfolding COVID-19 economic (dis)order — Ramadan, with its free-wheeling charity, its injunction to share, and its spiritual solutions to practical problems!

    For one, Ramadan-era palliatives (palliative! — again that COVID-19 season lockdown  buzz word!), in foodstuff donations from the well-heeled to poor neighbours and kith-and-kins, have been greatly constrained by the adverse impact of Coronavirus on personal pockets and the general economy.

    For another, hardly anyone is talking of Iftar, that free-giving after-fast dinner, as the pre-2020 globe had known it. The Shiek Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the largest mosque in UAE according to Wikipedia, feeds no less than 30, 000 people every Ramadan evening.  But not this year.

    Even at the White House, the American president often hosts Iftar in honour of American Muslims in their holiest month; just as Nigerian presidents, governors and community leaders, extend such Ramadan gestures to their constituencies.

    But who hears of such grand Iftars in Ramadan 2020?  Everything is banished by COVID-19 social distancing!

    Saudi Arabia, that often harvests a huge deluge of spiritual tourists, for the Ramadan Umrah (lesser Hajj), announced well in advance there wouldn’t be such this year.

    Even if it didn’t, with folks shuttered in home countries and air travel enduring a vicious slump — again, no thanks to COVID-19 — it’s a moot point how many could have made such prayerful sorties, no matter its assumed spiritual bounties.

    Talking of Hajj, it’s not clear if COVID-19 wouldn’t junk the main Hajj, that precedes the Eid-el-Kabir feast, with its ram-slaughtering, and free-wheeling fun and gaiety.

    Yet, both the Ramadan and the Hajj are among the five pillars of Islam, even if the Hajj is only mandatory for Muslims who can afford it.  If this trend continues, 2020 could well be the first year, in living contemporary history, that the yearly Hajj would be cancelled.

    But even before the Hajj, the Ramadan eid, the 2020 Eid-el-Fitri prayers, may be the first to be celebrated, not at the special communal prayer grounds, but in individual homes — again, no thanks to ravaging Coronavirus!

    Might that then be the strategic ploy behind the easing of lockdown, by some northern states, with the Ramadan inching to a close?

    That would be understandable political gamble, kowtowing to the religious sensibilities of their Muslim citizens.  Yet, it would be a reckless and needless health risk, for Coronavirus might just flare for the worse, after months of lockdown to curtail it.

    But however that balance is navigated, Nigerian Muslims have earned praise, for how they have adroitly navigated Ramadan 2020, despite the challenge COVID-19, that sheared it of its boisterous, communal soul.