The Nation Newspaper

Category: Vincent Akanmode

  • Tinubu’s misstep: Sadists live up to character

    Tinubu’s misstep: Sadists live up to character

    The moment the news filtered in that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had stumbled during an excursion with President Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey while on an official visit to the European country, my instincts told me that his detractors would celebrate the incident as if they had just won the jackpot in a multi-billion dollar lottery. And they did not disappoint as they lived up to expectation in extraordinary manner.

    By Thursday morning, the social media space had been taken over with caricatures of the President in inflated mockery of a fleeting incident, no thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI); the latest tool of mischief foisted on us by technology. Some members of a particular tribe, whose daily preoccupation is to pray for President Tinubu’s downfall so their son could become president, took the mischief further, as they were decked in a ceremonial uniform apparently sewn in anticipation of Wednesday’s incident, dancing hysterically to the sound of Ekwe.

    Some others pre-occupied themselves with taunts on the social media, completely oblivious of the strategic importance of the President’s mission to a country that is not only capable of enhancing our economic fortunes but also positioned to offer a clue for an end to the security misfortune our country has been grappling with for close to two decades, having at various times been accused of aiding its purveyors.

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    To be sure, it was not the first time the President would have such an experience. He had stumbled while climbing the boarding stairs of an aircraft during his campaign tour as the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the build-up to the 2023 elections. And as it is customary, his detractors had made a show of the minor incident in the social media, slanting the story to give the impression that he was too weak and fragile for the office he sought. His admirers were, however, quick to counter the narrative, saying that governance is not a job for the feet but one for the head (brain).

     Any fair observer would know that the misstep that caused Tinubu to stumble had nothing to do with lack of fitness. According to his spokesman, Mr Bayo Onanuga, the President simply lost his balance after stepping on a metal object while walking alongside his host. “This is not a big deal except for those who want to make mischief out of a fleeting incident. It was a mere stumble, thank God, not a fall,” he said. What is more, the President continued his engagement as scheduled.

    But how did we get to this point? When did we become a people that glory in the misfortune of others? Who, for crying out loud, is immune to stumbling or even falling? One of the earliest life lessons I learnt is that a man’s greatness is not determined by how many times he falls but how many times he rises after falling.

    What happened to the President in Ankara can happen to even the fittest of athletes. After all, sporting history is replete with cases of agile athletes who stumbled in their tracks and even fell. Lost on Tinubu’s detractors is the fact that the moment he was sworn into office as President, he seized to represent himself, his family or friends and acquaintances alone. He is the symbol of national authority; the face and image of Nigeria and the representative of every citizen, including those who did not vote for him during the 2023 polls.

    It, therefore amounts to self-ridicule on the part of those who chose to taunt him when he stumbled. Mercifully, he is not a weakling who would melt under the weight of such theatrics, much unlike a known presidential aspirant reputed for melting twice on national television, once over the criticisms directed at him by supporters of his political opponents, and once after losing the 2023 election.

    On his part, Tinubu is a leader who has not only developed a thick skin to the coarse invectives often hauled at him by his detractors but has also learnt to take even destructive criticisms with equanimity. “I have stopped visiting the social media. They abuse the hell out of me,” he once declared in a light-hearted manner. Chances are, therefore, that he might not even have seen the caricatures of him in the social media after the Turkey incident. But even if he did, one can rest assured that he is not losing sleep over it. His mission in Turkey is far too serious to be distracted by such inanities.

  • Bad times for bandits as Trump’s example catches on

    Bad times for bandits as Trump’s example catches on

    These, surely, are not the best of times for bandits, terrorists and other heartless anti-social elements who for years have made life unbearable for innocent Nigerians in Borno, Yobe, Katsina, Adamawa, Niger, Benue, Kogi, Kwara and other parts of the country. Their cup is full and the security agencies, aided by unprecedented support from America, are poised to return their ‘favours’ in the same measure as they had dished out to hapless citizens. They gave no quarter in the execution of their evil agenda and would get none from the military.

    From Sokoto and Niger to Kogi and Kwara states, the marauding beasts are finally feeling the heat. Their camps are in disarray from ground and air offensives launched by security agents. If the age-long submission of famous physicist Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion was previously lost on them, they must by now have embraced the reality that every action must necessarily provoke an equal and opposite reaction.

    In the perspective of a patriot, the optics from the nation’s security situation in recent weeks can hardly be more gratifying. It all began with American President Donald Trump’s famous social media post in which he threatened that American forces would invade Nigeria “gun-a-blazing” to end what he called genocide against the Christian population. While the debate raged on his flawed claim that only Christians were being killed by terrorists and bandits, the American President made good his threat in the night of December 25 last year with the launch of precision strikes on terrorist camps in Sokoto State. The American President would later announce the gesture as his Christmas gift to bandits who a few days earlier had vowed to make Christmas a moment of grief for the hapless Christian population.

    Trump’s action became a shot in the arm for the nation’s security agents who have since taken the fight to the terrorists in their enclaves in Borno, Kogi, Kwara, Niger and elsewhere. In Kogi State, for instance, the residents could heave a sigh of relief for the first time in many months after a recent invasion of some forests in the state where Ayere and Obajana, two previously obscure communities, suddenly became household names on account of their notoriety as hotspots for kidnapping. The two communities, which are gateways between the northern and southern parts of the country, had become nightmares for travellers.

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    A day hardly passed without a heart-rending story of commuters waylaid by dare-devil bandits who goaded them into the bush and subjected them to untold torture while also demanding as ransoms from their anxious relations sums huge enough to build a modern stadium. In a particularly pathetic instance, the bandits abducted a nursing mother from a passenger bus on her way from Lagos to Abuja, forcing her to leave her teething baby in the commercial bus they were travelling while they marched her and other travellers into the bush.

    The foregoing considered, it is difficult not to be excited by the will Kogi State Governor Ahmed Ododo has demonstrated in the fight against banditry in the state. Announcing government’s breakthrough in a press statement, the Kogi State Commissioner for Information and Communication, Hon. Kingsley Fanwo, attributed the success of the sustained war against banditry and terrorism in the state to series of highly successful precision operations carried out by coordinated joint security forces including the Nigeria Army, the Nigerian Navy, the Nigerian Air Force, the Department of State Services (DSS) and the National Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) with support from the Nigeria Police Force.

    He said: “The coordinated strikes and ground battle led to the destruction of several bandits’ camps, the dismantling of their criminal networks and the neutralization of many criminals with several others sustaining varying degrees of injuries. Initial feedback from affected communities has shown renewed confidence in the capacity and commitment of our security forces to decisively end banditry and kidnapping, not only in Kogi State but across the country.”

    Besides Kogi, there have been reports of precision air interdiction operations in Zamfara State, striking Turba Hill and Kachala Dogo Sule’s camp in Tsafe Local Government Area, which, according to the Director of Public Relations and Information of NAF, Air Commodore Ehimen Ejodame, engaged multiple active structures, “triggering intense fires that destroyed bandits’ facilities, neutralized many of them and crippled the group’s IED production and deployment capacity. In Sokoto, troops of the Lakurawa terrorist group are being forced to migrate towards Niger Republic as the heat from air strikes becomes unbearable.

    Unfortunately the security agents have not only the bandits and terrorists to contend with but also the army of cynics who see nothing in the successes being recorded against the anti-social elements. The cynical reactions, especially on the social media, are such that leave one wondering who their authors are supporting between terrorists and the nation. In extreme cases, many of them serve as informants to bandits and even supplied food, fuel and weapons to them in their hideouts. Even the traditional media is complicit in many cases. They gleefully report every incident of killing or kidnapping by terrorists but look away when security agents turn the table.

    But whether they like it or not, Nigeria is winning the war against banditry and terrorism. Only last week, Nigeria took delivery of new weapons from America; a reassuring development after Trump’s pledge to work with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for an end to the dare-devil groups.

  • Time to fish out the non-Fulani bandits in our midst

    Time to fish out the non-Fulani bandits in our midst

    Nothing can be more cheering than the news that after the initial dust raised by President Donald Trump’s threat to invade Nigeria with American soldiers gun-a-blazing, the United States of America is willing and ready to work with the Nigerian government in the effort to rid our country of Boko Haram, ISWAP, bandits and other terrorist groups responsible for the unrest and disorder that have been the lot of the country in recent times. Trump’s threat had been hinged on the belief that the killings, kidnappings and other violent acts in the country were targeted at the Christian population. But after days of dialogue between the leadership of the security agencies of the two countries, President Trump and America appear now persuaded, if not convinced, that the entire population is at the mercy of bandits and Islamist groups.

    The widely held belief before now was that the killings and kidnappings around the country were being perpetrated exclusively by a particular ethnic group, namely the Fulani. Recent indications, however, are to the effect that any genuine hunt for the perpetrators of these violent acts must not overlook the reality of internal collaborators in the various communities where the killings and kidnappings are taking place. For instance, from the Okun (Yoruba) part of Kogi State, which has lately become a hot spot for the evil practices, I have grown weary of complaints by concerned residents that many of their young men and women are now actively involved in the malady.

    Worried callers from the affected communities have hinted at least three incidents in recent times, which would convince any doubting Thomas that banditry is no longer an exclusive activity of a particular tribe or ethnic group. The first concerns the alleged killing of a young woman alongside suspected kidnappers by security agents who were combing one of the Kogi bushes believed to harbour bandits and kidnappers. Strangely, the death of the young woman was said to have attracted even a scintilla of sympathy for the slain woman or her family because it was generally believed that she met her Waterloo in the process of supplying food to bandits in their camp.

    In another suspicious development, a pastor based in Ayetoro-Gbede, an Okun (Yoruba) community in Ijumu Local Government Area, was said to have been abducted together with his Lagos-based wife, who had come on a visit. But while the couple was kidnapped around Ayere, their abductors directed that the N21 million raised for them as ransom should be kept at a particular spot in Ayetoro-Gbede, where the pastor was based and which is more than 50km away from the place where they were abducted.

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    In yet the third and most intriguing proof, a young man abducted with 17 other travellers around Oshokoshoko, a community between Kabba and Obajana where Dangote has a cement plant, managed to escape after two horror-filled days of a long trek through bushes and rivers, and finally found himself in Kabba town where he met three men chatting and decided to share his experience with them. But to his utter shock, one of the men, oblivious that the escapee understood enough Yoruba to know what he was talking about, picked up his phone and started asking the person at the other end why they allowed one of their abductees to escape!

    “He spoke in their local dialect. But even though I am an indigene of Benue State, I understand enough Yoruba to get what he was saying. It immediately occurred to me that the people I was telling my story to were part of the kidnapping ring. I told them I wanted to urinate and seized that chance to escape,” the young man said in a viral video.

    Before now, there had been testimonies by some victims of kidnapping in Yoruba land that their abductors were not Fulani but fellow Yoruba who were dressed like Fulani men. As far back as 2021, Suleiman Akinbami, an oil dealer abducted by kidnappers in Ekiti State, told newsmen after regaining his freedom with payment of an undisclosed sum as ransom, that his abductors were either Yoruba or they had lived long enough in Yoruba land to speak the Yoruba language with such fluency and grace.

    Akinbami said, “They spoke good Yoruba and good English. I want to believe that they have been in Yoruba land for a long time, if they are not Yoruba. They spoke good Yoruba. They spoke good English as well. They claimed to be jobless graduates.”

    The foregoing merely underscores the point that has been made by security experts for years: that security issues are not the exclusive preserve of security agents. Whether we know it or not, it is everybody’s business. We abandon the responsibility to security agents only at our own peril. Kidnappers are not spirits. They have kith and kin and live among people. The onus is on the members of the communities where they live to raise the alarm once they suspect their ways are short of the expectations of honest or upright people.

  • Sickening noise on whereabouts of rescued schoolgirls’ abductors

    Sickening noise on whereabouts of rescued schoolgirls’ abductors

    As a secondary school student, my classmates used to joke that I should pursue a degree in Theology because of my consistently high grades in Christian Religious Studies. But I have never eyed the pulpit or developed any likeness for the cassock. My fascination for the subject was the juicy stories that abound in the section of the syllabus recommended to us.

    One of the bible stories I enjoyed reading was Jesus’ healing, on the Sabbath day, of a man who had been blind from birth. As the story goes, Jesus and his disciples were walking along when they sighted the blind man, prompting a question from the disciples as to whether it was the blind man who had sinned or his parents. Jesus responded that neither the man nor his parents sinned. Rather, he was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

    Jesus then commenced the process of healing the man. He spat on the ground, mixed some mud with the saliva and applied the same on the blind man’s eyes, after which he directed him to go to a pool called Siloam and wash. The blind man did as Jesus directed and regained his sight. The incident became the talk of the town, drawing the ire of the Pharisees (Jesus’ perennial enemies), who said he committed an abomination by carrying out healing on the Sabbath, a day of the week when, by Jewish tradition, no one was expected to work.

    The Pharisees summoned the blind man’s parents and asked how their blind son regained his sight. The parents, already sensing that they were up to mischief, deflected the question, telling the Pharisees to direct it to their son because he was of age. They summoned the man who had been blind and said, “Tell us the truth; this man (Jesus) is a sinner.” The man who had been healed looked at them and said, “I don’t know whether he is a sinner or not. What I do know is that I was blind but now can see.”

    I was reminded of the story by the cynical reaction of the critics of the Tinubu administration to the rescue of some Nigerians, including schoolchildren, abducted in Niger, Kebbi, Kwara and some parts of the country recently. It is proof that treachery and cynicism are as old as human history. Hence (,) the negative reactions of some Nigerians to the return of the victims, who rather than congratulate the returnees and their loved ones (,) resorted to rhetoric on the whereabouts of their abductors, is rooted in human nature.

    It was as if the safety of the abductees mattered less than evidence that their abductors had been eliminated or arrested. In the immediate instance, the lives of the abductees were at stake, and their abductors held the power of life and death. They had the yam and the knife and were in a vantage position to decide what to do with them. They were the proverbial leper who cannot milk a cow but endowed with more than enough ability to spill the milk.

    Leading the pack of critics was former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who accused the Tinubu government of turning a national tragedy into a propaganda spectacle when the pictures of rescued schoolgirls in Kebbi State appeared online. “Why were these criminals not arrested, neutralized or dismantled on the spot? Why is the government boasting about talking to terrorists instead of eliminating them? Why is kidnapping now reduced to a routine phone call between criminals and state officials?” he queried.

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    But a former Field Commander of the Joint Task Force, Operation Safe Haven, Major-General Anthony Atolagbe (rtd), was quick to respond to the tirades of the former Vice President and his ilk, saying that they all spoke from a position of ignorance or limited understanding of what happens on the field. Gen. Atolagbe urged Nigerians to realise that rescue operations do not always result in the arrest or neutralization of kidnappers, because such missions are inherently complex and targeted primarily at saving lives.

    Rescue operations, he said, should not be confused with combat engagements as troops on such missions are not deployed to wage war but to ensure the safe return of victims. “You want to get the children out safe and alive. When you meet these people inserted between the children, what do you do? They may tell you, ‘Allow us to pull out and then you can take your children.’ Would you insist on capturing them, or leave them for a later date since you already know where they operate?”

    In spite of the insanity that has been unleashed on Nigeria by wailers who are always out to fault every move made by the authorities because of the hatred they harbour for the All Progressives Congress (APC)- led government, saving victims’ lives will always take precedence over pursuing kidnappers during an active operation.

    Ironically, the people demanding the heads of the kidnappers now in preference for the safe return of the victims would be the first to dismiss the rescuers as thoughtless and insensitive if any of them is hurt in the event of a crossfire with bandits. Nigeria should count herself lucky that the man at the helm in this moment of orchestrated violence is someone of Tinubu’s clout, intelligence and sagacity. Any of the other characters parading themselves as political rivals would have bolted or crumbled under the weight of the current challenges.

  • Wike, Yerima face-off: We owe Gambo nothing but gratitude

    Wike, Yerima face-off: We owe Gambo nothing but gratitude

    No one with a fair knowledge of Nigeria would dispute the fact that crisis is the pivot on which the wheel of our national life rotates. It is to us what water is to fish. Being a condition precedent for our national survival, we go out of our way to create one where there is none. And there is no limit to our creative ability in this regard. When we are not fighting a civil war, Boko Haram, ISWAP and IPOB are making life miserable for hapless citizens in the North and the Southeast while the Middle Belt battles the menace of soulless murderers that go by the appellation of herdsmen.

    In 2020, the world was still smarting from the devastating blow of the COVID-19 pandemic when some inebriated youths unleashed the malady of EndSARS; a nationwide protest against alleged excesses of members of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) unit of the Nigeria Police Force, which shook the nation to its very foundation. Of course, there have also been other crises of less magnitude but whose impacts are no less pernicious, the most recent being the face-off between the military and the authorities of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

    For the better part of the outgoing week, a dramatic altercation between the FCT Minister Nyesom Wike and a certain Navy Lieutenant A.M. Yerima was the focus of social and traditional media. At the heart of it was a parcel of land in the nation’s capital city, Abuja, allegedly being developed by a former Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Zubairu Gambo, without approval from the Federal Capital Development Authority.

    As the story goes, a residential apartment was being built on the land located in an area mapped out for park and gardens. Wike, the FCT Minister and by implication the official landlord of the nation’s capital city, got wind of the development and decided to pay a visit with his retinue of aides. To their chagrin, they got to the construction site only to be confronted by Yerima, who pointedly told Wike that he would only access the construction site over his dead body, because he had an “order from above” not to let anyone in. An altercation thus ensued between the two parties with some coarse invectives from the exasperated minister.

    Not surprisingly, the unusual confrontation has torn the country into two camps of Wike and Yerima supporters, each taking positions that suit their emotions and biases. While some have accused the young naval officer of being rude and disrespectful in his altercation with Wike, others say the FCT Minister should take the blame for acting infra dignitatem and disrespecting the military for dressing down a Navy Lieutenant in uniform.

    Many Yerima supporters, who think nothing of the soldiers that are sleeping in trenches in Sambisa Forest prosecuting the war against Boko Haram and ISWAP, are lionizing Yerima as a hero and decorating him with garlands for guarding a private property owned by a retired officer and for confronting Wike over the matter. They would not stop to ask themselves what justification there is for deploying soldiers to guard an illegally acquired private property at a time the nation is at war with Boko Haram, ISWAP, Lakurawa, bandits, killer herdsmen, IPOB and other terrorist groups. How many soldiers would be left to prosecute these wars if every privileged officer toes Gambo’s path and deploy their underlings to guard their private properties?

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    Still, we must count our luck as a nation and profusely thank Gambo or whoever had instructed Yerima to keep guard at the disputed land for limiting his brief to merely denying the minister access. What if the order he had was to shoot the minister and his entourage at sight? Of course, Yerima would have obeyed and we would by now be mourning the untimely exit of one of the most productive public officers in the nation’s history.

    Fela, the late iconoclastic Afrobeats exponent had in various songs told us how robotic soldiers are when it comes to obeying the last order. The Wike-Yerima incident reminded me of the lyrics of his famous song, Zombie, wherein he sang that Zombie (referring to soldiers) would not go unless you ask him to go; he would not stop unless you ask him to stop; he would not turn unless you ask him to turn and he would not think unless you ask him to. Then he added the dreadful verse:

    Tell am to go straight, na jooro jaara jooro

    No break, no jam no sense, na jooro, jaara jooro

    Tell am to go kill, na jooro jaara jooro

    No break, no jam, no sense

    Na jooro jaara jooro

    Tell am to go die, na jooro jaara jooro

    No break, no jam, no sense, jooro jaara jooro

    Although Fela later paid dearly for this frank assessment of the military with soldiers’ violent attack on his house, the truth had been told about their mindset, which is why we must all be thankful, because the order on which Yerima acted could be worse.

  • Why Nigerians mocked Sowore

    Why Nigerians mocked Sowore

    To come right out with it, this piece is a response to the surprise expressed by Farook Kperogi, a US-based academic and public affairs commentator, that some Nigerians could mock politician cum human rights activist, Omoyele Sowore, after his encounter with the police during the Free Kanu protest in Abuja on Tuesday. Sowore, the emeritus chairman and presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), no doubt surprised even himself as he nearly broke Usain Bolt’s 100 metres sprint record at the instance of the teargas fired by policemen on patrol during the protest he led for the release of Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu.

    A video that went viral on social media later that day showed Sowore as he gathered momentum at the sight of a police patrol van, and bolted at the sound of teargas without alerting his fellow protesters of imminent danger. The result was the arrest of eight protesters who, according to the Force Public Relations Officer, Benjamin Hundeyin, were taken into custody for contravening a court order restricting them from certain parts of the federal capital city.

    In a post on his Facebook page, US-based academic and public affairs commentator, Farook Kperogi, could not help wondering why Sowore was being mocked by his detractors for voting with his feet at the sound of teargas from an advancing police vehicle.

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    He said: “I honestly can’t understand why some Nigerians are mocking Omoyele Sowore for retreating after security forces fired what sounded like live rounds during the #FreeNnamdiKanuNow protest in Abuja today. They are cynically framing it as cowardice. Really?

    “So bravery now means standing unarmed before flying bullets? And if he had died, they would have called him foolhardy. You may disagree with his politics, which is entirely legitimate, but you can’t deny that Sowore has the courage of his convictions.

    “He’s out there risking his life, comfort, safety and freedom for what he believes in, while most of his critics never stepped beyond their keyboards.”

    Ordinarily, a citizen in Sowore’s situation should attract public support and sympathy, even though his choice of protest as second nature was a personal decision. Protests and agitation are critical ingredients of democracy and governance, especially in a pluralistic society like ours, and Sowore has ridden the crest of them since his days as a students’ union leader in the early 1990s. Asking him to live without engaging in protests now is like asking a fish to live without water. He is now so used to protesting that when there are no issues to protest against, he creates one. That probably informed his decision to launch the agitation for Kanu’s release via public protests while the IPOB leader’s kinsmen were busy working out legal and political solutions.

    While Kperogi may have seen Sowore as a hero by his decision to swallow Paracetamol for another person’s headache, it is not so with many Nigerians who see him as nothing but a busybody  desperate for public attention. One man’s meat, after all, is another man’s poison. Besides his scant regard for constituted authorities, Sowore is yet to imbibe the twin virtues of respect and humility, which have repeatedly brought him into conflicts with people in authority and created a gulf between him and others whose sympathy he ought to gain.

    In the instance of Kanu, Sowore’s case becomes even more complicated. Based on the atrocities committed by the foot soldiers of the IPOB leader, he was arrested and kept in prison. He was, however, granted bail in April 2017 only for him to flee and launch vitriolic attacks on the country from his base abroad, using the armed wing of IPOB known as the Eastern Security Network. During the ENDSARS riot in 2020, he seized the opportunity of the crisis to bark orders to his foot soldiers from his Radio Biafra on who and where to attack in Lagos, Port Harcourt and other Nigerian cities.

    Unfortunately for him, he was re-arrested in Kenya in 2021 and brought back to Nigeria, following which he was arraigned for acts of terrorism. The prosecution has since closed its case, while Kanu and his lawyers decided to embark on legal gymnastics when it was time to open their defence. In the midst of all this, Sowore saw an opportunity to hog the spotlight and seized it with both hands. He allegedly approached some Igbo political leaders, who declined support for any form of public protest, preferring a legal and political solution to the matter. Disappointed at their response, he turned to some undiscerning Igbo traders and apprentices, suborning them into the unwholesome project.

    Considering the weight of the allegations against Kanu, which border on the killing of innocent Igbo and non-Igbo indigenes by the militant arm of IPOB, calling on the authorities to set its leader free without trial is most insensitive. While no one has declared Kanu guilty of the allegations, it is only fair, even to him, that he makes maximum use of the opportunity he has to defend himself in court. Sowore should put himself in the shoes of the family members of the military couple allegedly beheaded and turned into mincemeat by some IPOB members, among other dastardly killings, as well as the mass destruction and jailbreaks facilitated by the groups during the 2020 EndSARS protests and judge whether it is fair to set Kanu free without trial.

    Considering the momentum of grandstanding he built before the protest day, the personal aggrandizement behind his desperation to lead the Free Kanu protest, the insensitive nature of the protest with regard to the families and relations of the victims of Kanu’s violent agitation and the anti-climax that attended the entire project, it was difficult not to laugh when Sowore burst into speed at the sound of teargas.

  • Of excellent Amupitan and cynics’ catechism

    Of excellent Amupitan and cynics’ catechism

    In spite of the red flag raised by the touted 1,000 National Assembly lawyers and other groups and individuals in respect of the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Administration) of the University of Jos, Prof. Joash Amupitan’s nomination as the new National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the screening exercise at the Senate chambers on Thursday went without a hitch.

    The nomination announcement had barely been made when a certain Dr. ‘Dayo Osifeso hit the social media with a post highlighting what he termed grey areas in Amupitan’s resume released by the Special Adviser to the President on Information, Mr. Bayo Onanuga. His grouse was that the resume released by the President’s spokesman did not reflect the primary and secondary schools the nominee attended or the timelines of his attendance. He also could not help wondering how it was possible for Amupitan to attend the Kwara State Polytechnic at age 15. Besides, Osifeso raised issues about his career progression as a lecturer at the University of Jos.

    While the dust raised by Osifeso was yet to settle, a coalition of lawyers under the aegis of Association of Legislative Drafting and Advocacy Practitioners (ALDRAP) were up in arms against their professional colleague, asking the Senate to reject his nomination as INEC chair. They swore that Amupitan was unfit for the position on account of his previous role as lead counsel to the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the 2023 Presidential Election Petition at the Supreme Court. It would later turn out that in their desperation to fault the appointment of the eminent scholar and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, they had confused Switzerland with Swaziland, advertised Amupitan as Osipitan and literally dressed the neutral academic in the garb of a passionate APC ally.

    It has emerged from Thursday’s screening exercise that from his upbringing to academic and professional careers, Amupitan is a candidate made in heaven for the beleaguered seat of INEC Chairman. I speak not as a distant observer but from the position of an insider who has followed the trajectory of the nominee from childhood. We did not only grow up together in our native Ayetoro-Gbede community in Kogi State, we both attended LSMB Primary School No 2 where his father, Mr. Benson Amupitan, a passionate community leader, was my class teacher in Primary 6.

    It bears relevance to state that the senior Amupitan treated me like his biological son, probably because my father was the Oba and he usually visited the palace, hence I had known him long before he became my teacher. Given the values he inculcated in us as his pupils, it is not a surprise that his biological son, a precocious pupil, who was two years my junior, would break the barriers of academics in the spectacular fashion that now leaves his critics confused. He told us to aim high always because, as he used to put it, “to aim low is a crime”.

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    He also told us never to be ashamed of our identity, citing the famous Ghanaian nationalist James Aggrey’s eternal words: “Whoever is not proud of his colour is not fit to live”. In the light of this, he told my sibling Richard and I to insist that people must pronounce our surname correctly because its meaning was being corrupted by the way it was pronounced by most people.

    The senior Amupitan influenced the course of my academic journey as he did a few other classmates with his insistence as our class teacher that we must all take the admission forms of a new school jointly founded by the about 13 communities that make up Gbede land. At that time, it was fashionable that upon graduating from a primary school within the community, the next step was to proceed to a secondary school in Kabba, Okene, Lokoja, Ilorin or some other towns and cities in the old Kwara State. But on the eve of our graduation, he came into class with the entry forms of Baptist Secondary Commercial School (BSCS), Iyah-Gbede, and insisted that we must all take them.

    Most of us had already passed the state-administered Common Entrance Examination and were waiting to be called for the oral interview. Hence we thought nothing of the move. Personally, I had made Crowther Memorial College, Lokoja my preferred secondary school and was confident of being admitted. But it turned out that Richard and I were among the four pupils admitted by BSCS with the consequence that our father declined when we request to go for the oral interview that would have facilitated my admission into Crowther Memorial College. He asked what else we wanted after securing admission into BSCS. Thus the admission forms we took just to please the teacher became a faith accompli.

    In all those years, I had known Prof. Amupitan, whose mother was also a respected teacher in the community, as Omo Oga (the teacher’s son), which in itself was a huge privilege. A proof of his brilliance was the fact that he departed LSMB 2, Ayetoro-Gbede for St. Barnabas Secondary School, Kabba from Primary 5 in an age that other pupils spent the mandatory six years before they graduated. That was possible because he had educationally exposed parents to guide his path.

    It is instructive that his father later veered into a career in the judiciary after undergoing a diploma programme in Law to become an Area Court judge. The move probably inspired Prof. Amupitan’s choice of a career in Law with specialisation in Evidence, making him to look like a perfect fit for the INEC job. But is he the answer to the army of cynics who would never see anything good in President Tinubu’s appointments? Only time will tell.

  • Before social media turn us all into lunatics

    Before social media turn us all into lunatics

    Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, was the first to make a distinction between two worlds. According to him, there is an ideal world of which the world we live in is a copy. Therefore, our world, which he called the world of form, is nothing but an imitation of the ideal world, as everything that exists in the former is only a duplicate copy of the perfect, unchanging version in the latter. Thus every person, bird, animal and even lifeless object you see in our ephemeral world has its perfect, original form in the world of ideal.

    To be sure, I had high admiration for Plato’s postulation as a university student with elective courses in Philosophy. But it was not until the advent of the social media that I was really hit by the plausibility of the point made by Plato. Today, we are all witnesses to two worlds, namely the one we live in and the noisy and boisterous one that thrives on lies, deceit and make-believe—the social media.

    For Nigeria and Nigerians, things have not been the same since the advent of the global system for mobile communications (GSM) which ushered in the social media at the tail end of the 20th Century. Gone is the privacy that once characterised the closely knit family life of the people, many of whom now spend virtually their entire life on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), TikTok and other social media handles, posting false messages intended to deceive or misinform the unsuspecting reader with a view to achieving some ulterior ends.

    When Mark Elliot Zuckerberg founded the Facebook, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger founded Instagram and Zhang Yiming founded TikTok, it was with a view to sharing positive ideas among users. But the platforms have since been hijacked by fraudsters, bandits, prostitutes, kidnappers and other anti-social elements for nefarious activities that put the lives of other users in danger. The result is that sane and decorous people who cannot stomach the madness of social media have abandoned the space to people of questionable character.

    Now the few that are left on the platforms are deluding themselves thinking that their wishes must prevail over those of the silent majority. So, when the vocal minority chooses a particular direction like they did during the 2023 elections, they assume that everyone else has followed their chosen path. This was the context in which they voted in one direction in the last presidential election and cried blue murder when their preferred candidate lost.

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    I laughed in Hebrew when after the result of the last governorship election in Edo State the candidate of a particular party rejected it on the basis that the result declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did not tally with social media opinions, including that of an on-air personality reputed for championing the cause of the headless mob. Anyone who takes them seriously has himself to blame. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu admitted knowing this much before and after the election that ushered him in as president in 2023 but chose to ignore them because he knew he had the support of the rational but silent majority.

    The other day, I shook my head in pity for Super Falcons midfielder, Deborah Abiodun, as she wept in a trending video over the verbal attacks he suffered from a social media mob two days after she helped the national female football team to clinch the African Cup of Nations for a record 10th time. A day after the team was received by President Tinubu at the Presidential Villa with lavish gifts of money, houses and national honours, she was out on her Facebook page weeping and wailing over the taunts directed at her by some social media lunatics.

    In their usual insensitive manner, they said on account of her pint-sized physique, she would be wasting her time to expect a marriage proposal from any man. My pity for her stemmed from the realization that unlike President Tinubu, she was one of the people who still could not make a distinction between the real world we live in and the fake world of social media.

    Only recently, a Facebook user made a post on his wall, boasting about his ability to generate fuel from palm trees. As newshounds, we were curious, and launched an effort to ascertain the veracity of his claims. Besides it could be a breakthrough that would change lives, draw massive investments and generally help the society.

    Pronto, a call was made to the self-acclaimed researcher for an interview to further shed light on his ‘breakthrough’. Our curiousity was further heightened with some videos he sent to demonstrate how fuel is extracted from palm trees. But it became a different story we finally met the inventor and he began to stammer. In the end, it was a claim he made with the hope of extorting money from unsuspecting members of the public who might want to subscribe to the project.

    These and other antics are reasons why some Nigerians have asked for regulation of the social media.

  • A country without lawyers is blessed

    A country without lawyers is blessed

    Any patriotic Nigerian would be bothered by the pensive mien of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, as he addressed a gathering of legal eggheads, including the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, at the Supreme Court complex in Abuja on Monday. His low and shaky voice betrayed the weight of the embarrassment he felt from the shame and disgrace some lawyers have brought to the bar in recent times.

    “It is for this reason that my office has now taken the unusual step of verifying the authenticity of this and other complaints with a view to referring them to the appropriate disciplinary bodies,” he said. The AGF was referring to a recent incident involving the alleged inglorious bid by flamboyant lawyer, rights activist and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike Ozekhome, to take possession of a London property belonging to the late former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Lt-Gen. Jeremiah Useni.

    As the story goes, the property, House 79 Randall Avenue, London NW2, was purchased by Useni in 1993, using the name ‘Tali Shani’. But following his death in January this year, Ozekhome moved to take ownership of the property and, in the process, got himself entangled in a messy case that bordered on forgery, impersonation, corruption and conspiracy.

    Trouble began when Ozekhome sought to register the said property, which he claimed was transferred to him by the owner, ‘Mr Tali Shani’, in August 2021 as a gift and out of gratitude for the many legal services he (Ozekhome) had rendered to him in the past. Unfortunately for the SAN, another ‘Tali Shani’, a female, represented by her solicitors at the London tribunal, had also laid claim to the property.

    Thus began a legal battle with claims and counter-claims that exposed both parties as nothing but two bands of impostors desirous of reaping where they did not sow. “The final outcome of this case, therefore, is that both parties have failed. Neither ‘Tali Shani’ was who they said they were… The real owner, via a false name, was General Jeremiah Useni,” the judge declared, leaving the activist lawyer and his rival crestfallen.

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    Of course, any well-meaning Nigerian would be disappointed with what transpired at the London tribunal, but only a few would be surprised, knowing that the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), the umbrella body of lawyers to which Ozekhome belongs, has hardly conducted itself in a more dignifying way in recent times. Put more succinctly, its public conduct in recent times has fallen far short of the expectations of patriotic Nigerians.

    A few months ago, the body was up in arms against Ibok Ete Ibas, the administrator appointed for Rivers State in the aftermath of the state of emergency declared by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for daring to complain that it collected a whopping N300 million from the state government but failed to honour an agreement that its annual national conference would be held in the state. Instead, the conference was moved to Enugu State, where another huge sum must have changed hands.

    Rather than show remorse for what was an obvious act of betrayal, the body brazenly declared that the money in question was a gift from the Rivers State Government and not something concomitant on any form of obligation! The situation has caused many to wonder what would be left for governance if every professional body becomes a recipient of such gifts.

    Sadly, the NBA thinks nothing of the aforementioned scandals, but was quick to demand a probe into Ibas’ tenure as the administrator of Rivers State as well as the recent Afriland fire outbreak that claimed some lives in Lagos recently.

    On the basis of its antics, the only reason the NBA has not been tagged a political party is that it is yet to officially register as one. Every of its gathering is laced with campaign, especially against the administration of President Tinubu as was witnessed during its recent conference in Enugu where, in a partisan theatrics, Channels Television presenter Seun Okinbaloye led the lawyers in an open ridicule of the President and his government. It was a repeat of the caricature they made of Vice President Kashim Shettima as the running mate of Tinubu and guest at their annual conference in the build-up to the presidential election in 2023.

    Law, it must be said, is nothing but an assemblage of moral values and the consequences for their violation arranged in sections and sub-sections. Without ethics, it is nothing better than a car without an engine. That, unfortunately, is the lot of Nigeria with NBA’s scant regard for morality. It would not be a surprise if the people charged with designing the academic curricular of universities and law schools are already contemplating blacking out ethics the same way former President Olusegun Obasanjo directed that History be wiped out from schools.

    The special treatment accorded two new entrants into the legal profession, Dino Melaye and Deji Adeyanju, over and above established lawyers with immense contributions to Nigeria’s legal jurisprudence during a recent gathering of the body is danger signal that worse days await the bar unless there is proper re-orientation of the new generation of lawyers. AGF Fagbemi’s declaration on Monday that he had started a probe into the messy property controversy in the United Kingdom could be a good starting point.

  • Why Obi’s crowd should worry true patriots

    Why Obi’s crowd should worry true patriots

    Not a few of our countrymen were alarmed when the news filtered out that the presidential candidate of Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, paid a visit to the controversial Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi, on his way to the town hall meeting the Arewa Joint Committee had with frontline presidential candidates in Kaduna on October 17. Obi’s visit to Gumi, a vocal and eloquent advocate of bandits and terrorists whose violent activities have literally brought governance to its knees in many parts of the north, had taken place barely a month after the Department of State Service (DSS) arrested his known associate, Tukur Mamu, for alleged involvement in banditry and kidnapping. It seemed to matter nothing to Obi that Mamu, Gumi’s man Friday, was arrested with a load of incriminating items, according to the DSS.

    But Obi’s visit to Gumi would not come as a surprise to Nigerians who had followed the trajectory of his association and followership since he became the presidential candidate of the Labour Party. A cursory look at his support base would reveal that it is made up mainly of the band of boisterous youths who in October 2020 unleashed terror on the nation in the guise of EndSARS movement. A supposedly peaceful protest against alleged excesses of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police metamorphosed into an orgy of killing, burning and looting as supposed protesters unleashed mayhem on the nation for days. They did not only kill innocent police officers, they private and public buildings, destroyed vehicles including scores of mass transit buses belonging to the Lagos State Government and broke prison walls across the country to set their inmates free.

    It was a national tragedy that could have been avoided if the naughty elements at the vanguard of the protest had heeded the wise counsel of perceptible Nigerians who asked that the protest be suspended to prevent hoodlums from hijacking it. Surprisingly, many of the faces in the ruinous undertaken that nearly rendered the nation ungovernable are now the most visible of Obi’s supporters on and off the social media. As if to leave no one in doubt about their identity, the supporters of the presidential candidate of Labour Party chose the Lekki Toll Gate venue of the EndSARS protest in 2020 to campaign for him on the anniversary of the regrettable incident. Mercifully, the law enforcement agents rose to the occasion and frustrated what could have ended up a repeat of the 2020 catastrophe.

    Yet more worrisome is the task Obi has taken upon himself in recent times to defend the activities of IPOB with every ounce of energy he can muster. At every opportunity, he sticks his neck out for the outlawed group, insisting that the militant agitators who have made life unbearable for the inhabitants of the Southeast region are not terrorists as branded by the federal government. On national television and elsewhere, he has also risen in stout defence of IPOB’s military wing, the Easter Security Network (ESN), describing it as a legitimate organisation in spite government’s stand to the contrary.

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    Speaking in an interview on Channels Television early in the month, Obi said: “The only thing I disagree with is naming IPOB terrorist. They are not terrorists. Those who took the decision may have information that I don’t have. I stay in Onitsha and I can tell you that they are people. I pass them on the road every day. I meet and live with them. In fact, I usually see people gathering and I have never had the sense of threat or molestation from them, even when they gather.”

    At the interactive session organized by Arewa Joint Committee in Kaduna on October 15, Obi also recently averred that the ESN was a creation of the governors of the Southeast states contrary to the information in public domain that the body responsible for the heartless killing of security agents and hapless individuals who dare ignore the stay-at-home order on Mondays was created by IPOB in December 2020.

    Responding to a member of the audience who asked why the north should trust Obi when he had never for once condemned the IPOB sit-at-home order that had made life miserable for the average inhabitant of the Southeast, Obi said there was no way he could condemn the activities of the ESN since it was formed by the government of the eastern states. He said: “You’ve not been following my campaign. The Eastern Security Network was formed by the government of eastern states. The governors formed the security team, how can I go and condemn them? I’ve spoken about sit-at-home and I can tell you there was even a place they mentioned me. Everything I say, go and verify.”

    An age-long aphorism says show me your friend and I will tell you who you are. The kind of association Obi keeps should warrant asking the real motive behind his quest for the presidential seat. While one cannot but note the point made by Obi’s spokesman, Kenneth Okonkwo that the Labour Party’s presidential candidate did no wrong visiting Gumi because he needs to carry everyone along whether saint or sinner, the problem is that he seems to be embracing more sinners than he is doing saints. The threat Obi’s crowd constitutes is not in its number but in its nature. Their threat is not to Tinubu, Atiku or other presidential candidates but to our collective survival as a nation if he becomes president with the same crowd around him.