The Nation Newspaper

Category: Festus Eriye

  • A short history of Nigerian terror, by PDP

    A short history of Nigerian terror, by PDP

    A politician’s grief is often very brief – especially when he or his kin are not on the receiving end of some tragic happening. When they make their public shows of empathy, it is often with an eye on the photo opportunity or to pre-empt any criticism about being unfeeling.

    But this week Nigeria’s apex leadership outdid itself. What President Goodluck Jonathan did in scurrying to Kano to preside over a reception for defecting ex-Governor Ibrahim Shekarau barely 24 hours after 80 innocent Nigerians were blown to smithereens by terrorist bombs at Abuja’s Nyanya motor park is beyond the pale.

    We are talking of 80 souls, for God’s sake, blown away in one moment of madness in the nation’s capital! How does the president react? One photo-opportunity at the bedside of a victim and quick as a flash he’s off to Kano for a bout of singing and dancing.

    Politicians must truly be remarkable people who can switch from one emotion to another the way we turn light bulbs on and off. It just shows how desensitised we have become and what low stock we now set by human lives that rather than accept that he had made a mistake, the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman, Olisah Metuh, launched into an inane defence of the shameful outing.

    In search of rationalisation, he embarked on time travel – landing in 1984 where he pounced on the fact that the then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, continued with the Tory Party conference in Brighton after a terrorist attack that killed five.

    What he did not tell us was whether Britain was under the kind of siege that has seen hundreds of people blown to bits by bombs in Nigerian villages and towns every week. It is always convenient to throw such isolated examples.

    The PDP spokesman should tell us how the leadership of Norway reacted in 2011 when a gunman killed 77 young people on the island of Utoya. Aside other actions, the nation declared 30 days of mourning. That was just one incident! Here such things happen every other day and we react by going dancing.

    No one is saying the government should shut down – because that would be impractical and pointless. But we have to show that we value human life and respect our people; and that as leaders our actions are not driven only by naked ambition and lust for power. In any event, the Kano excursion had nothing to do with governance: it was purely partisan politics – an occasion for Jonathan to inveigh against his arch foe, Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso.

    While we were still digesting this, the nation woke up to the shocking news that barely 24 hours after that brutal Nyanya attack, Boko Haram insurgents invaded an isolated secondary school in Borno and abducted over 100 girls.

    These days barely a week goes by without one such outrage or another. Leaders who respect their people would understand that these are not ordinary times and keep a low profile – especially when they cannot provide solutions to the evil ravaging the land.

    Instead we continue to be assaulted by the arrogant and illogical statements from the likes of the PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Olisah Metuh. In his latest offering he accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) leadership, governors – even Rotimi Amaechi of being the sponsors of Boko Haram. Others whom he has identified as being the founders and financiers of the sect include former Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari and suspended Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.

    It is only in frontier territory that this sort of outrage can happen. You impugn people’s character in such a manner in the name of politics! Buhari has threatened to go to court if he doesn’t get an apology within seven days. Hopefully, Metuh and the PDP would be inundating the courts with proof soon.

    The volatile partisan air that has overtaken the land cannot obliterate historical facts. Credible chronicles have been written tracing the emergence of what is now known as Boko Haram to the influences of the defunct radical Islamist group Maitatsine which flowered in parts of northern Nigeria in the 80s and was eventually wiped out in the early 1990s.

    The present incarnation of the sect emerged from a radical group that met at the Ndimi Mosque in Maiduguri around 2002. They were led by the sect founder, Mohammed Ali, and were implacably opposed to the government of the then Borno State Governor, Mala Kachalla, who they viewed as irredeemably corrupt. Ali would later extend his activities to the Kanama community in Yobe State where he met his end in 2003 after clashes with the police and army.

    It was the survivors of this battle who regrouped in the Ndimi mosque under the leadership of Mohammed Yusuf. Up until the clash between sect members and the administration of the then Borno State Governor, Ali Modu Sheriff, in February 2009 over the use of helmets by motor cycle riders, they remained largely a local phenomenon.

    But in July 2009, the sect would have a pivotal run-in with law the enforcement agents who stopped a procession of the group on their way to bury a prominent member of the sect. The clashes from that one incident snowballed into a massive orgy of burning and looting across Bauchi, Borno and Yobe States.

    In the process, several policemen were killed. The intervention of the military brought the situation in Maiduguri under control and led to Yusuf being apprehended. Unfortunately, after soldiers handed him over he would be killed by extra-judicial means whilst in police custody. From that point on the thirst for revenge against federal government led by then President Umaru YarÁdua seemed to imbue the sect with a new zeal for mayhem that very few would have predicted.

    As Nigerians thrashed around looking for explanations for the enduring power of the sect, many recalled a pregnant statement made in the heat of the 2011 PDP residential contest. So much has been made of the statements by Alhaji Lawal Kaita to the effect that the North would make Nigeria ungovernable if the PDP forced Jonathan down their throat as presidential candidate in 2011.

    Metuh has also referred to comments made at the party’s convention that year by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to the effect that those who make peaceful change impossible make violence change inevitable.

    These statements are now the lazy and convenient explanations for the scourge of terror sweeping the land. Unfortunately, these things don’t add up. Anyone who has followed the rise of Boko Haram and the emergence of its leaders like Yusuf and Abubakar Shekau would know that mainstream northern politicians had very little influence or contact with the group.

    If anything, the sect’s leaders had only contempt for them. We seem to forget that it is this same sect that has threatened to kill everyone from the Sultan of Sokoto to former President Ibrahim Babangida, Buhari and others. A few days ago, they killed a monarch who dared complain about their activities.

    Indeed, if anybody should be accused of being the driving forces behind the Boko Haram, it is those from within the ruling party. We have the weighty testimony of a President Jonathan to that effect! Speaking during an inter-denominational service to mark the 2012 Armed Forces Remembrance Day, he shocked the world by claiming that the sect had infiltrated his government.

    “Some of them are in the executive arm of government; some of them are in the parliamentary/legislative arm of government while some of them are even in the judiciary.

    “Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies. Some continue to dip their hands and eat with you and you won’t even know the person who will point a gun at you or plant a bomb behind your house.”

    Before it became fashionable to accuse the APC of terrorism, this same administration fought attempts in 2012 by the United States government to declare Boko Haram a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO). The excuse? Such designation cause travelling inconveniences for Nigerians at foreign airports. The administration also argued that it was capable of resolving the problem with its own local solutions and didn’t need the American action.

    Fast forward to 2013 when the US went ahead anyway and labelled Boko Haram an FTO. Without any sense of shame, the same government that was so keen to give comfort to the sect it claimed to be talking to, tripped over itself to welcome the move.

    A couple of weeks ago, President Jonathan told an African Union Conference of Ministers of Finance, Economic and Planning in Abuja, that terrorists  like Boko Haram and others who had access to very expensive weapons were clearly receiving external support.

    All of this flies in the face of the partisan charges being levelled against the opposition. If indeed the government and PDP know what they claim, then it is a mystery that decisive action is yet to be taken. A government that has all this information about the ‘terrorist’ activities of opposition leaders and has not apprehended and prosecuted them, can only be described as a joke.

    But then, recent Nigerian history is replete with such antics. It was standard practice under the regime of the late General Sani Abacha to accuse every opponent or critic of the junta of coup-plotting. Many were jailed for participating in phantom coups that existed only in the imagination of the dictator’s goons.

    The antics and utterances of the PDP and the government show that they still don’t grasp the gravity of the insurgency. If Jonathan and his men think that partisan posturing is the way out, then they should go ahead and solve the problem. But commonsense suggests that this is a time to rally the nation rather than demonising the opposition.

  • The politics of size

    The politics of size

    In terms of population, land mass and mineral endowments, Nigeria is massive relative to most countries in Africa. Our population of over 150 million people – if they were truly economically empowered – would make this nation a powerhouse. So the controversial recent rebasing of our gross domestic product (GDP) is only stating the obvious in book form.

    Unfortunately, our high numbers are made up largely of very poor people who cannot afford much. Instead of squabbling about whether the rebasing is right or wrong, we should rather be scandalised that given our huge population we are only generating so much.

    Over the last 53 years, a succession of leaders have failed to harness the natural advantages our size offers either on the economic front locally, or diplomatically on the continental and global stage. That is why today millions of Nigerians have become economic refugees fleeing to unlikely places like South Africa, Libya or Cyprus – anywhere would do!

    It is the same failure of leadership that has seen smaller African countries run rings around us as we have contested for things on the international stage. They have little or no respect for our size – pre or post rebasing. Their reaction is a function of how we’ve squandered our potentials.

    It isn’t that size doesn’t count. There are obvious advantages that being identified as the biggest economy in a region or continent confer on a country. Were it not so, many would not have paid any attention to last weekend’s landmark.

    Size does count for something. For many years the South Africans basked in the honour of being described as Africa’s biggest economy. They were certainly not too thrilled at seeing the title slip out of their grasp – no matter how untidy the process of Nigeria’s emergence on top may have been.

    The official reaction from Pretoria was very proper and welcomed the fact that African countries were rising on the global scene. However, unofficial tweets that circulated in the country in reaction to the new GDP figures were more revealing. Most were keen to emphasise that while Nigeria may have a larger population, the rebasing didn’t change the fact that South Africa had the more prosperous and advanced economy.

    One commentator, Dr. Martyn Davies, CEO of Frontier Advisory, argued that the new label didn’t amount to more than underlining the fact that Nigeria had a larger population. “No country became rich through buying consumer goods. They become rich through saving, investing, innovating, embracing technology, driving productivity… Not GDP.”

    “Three things create wealth in successful economies – obviously considering clean, effective government as a given… its innovation, its productivity and its technology… And I don’t see really any of the three coming out of Nigeria at all. It’s purely a numbers game. Fast moving consumer goods facing numbers game. That is it,” he said.

    One advantage of being branded the biggest is that it is now a reality investors looking for opportunities on the continent must deal with. The challenges and cost of doing business here notwithstanding, they would think hard about sidestepping the immense opportunities offered by our huge market.

    On the home front, the largely negative reaction to Nigeria’s overnight emergence in the ranks of the world’s 30 largest economies can be understood from two perspectives. Firstly, it represents one of the few bits of good news on the economy for President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration in a very long while.

    He and his team would naturally want to take credit for the new labelling because it has happened under his watch. It doesn’t matter whether his policies or those of his predecessors are what triggered the quantum leap.

    But what really riles people is that no attempt is being made by the government to put the rebasing in perspective. The suggestion somehow seems to be that the new GDP figures mean life for the average Nigerian has become better under Jonathan because his statisticians tapped their calculators – releasing a batch of impressive new numbers.

    Worse for the government, the results have been unveiled against the backdrop of the tragic Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment exercise a few weeks back which left 19 dead across the country. As of today millions of able-bodied, educated citizens are pining away in the ranks of the unemployed. Indeed, one of the defining images of the Jonathan years would be the cavernous Abuja National Stadium overflowing with desperate jobseekers.

    It is hard to be impressed with the rebasing when it is happening at a time Nigerians are feeling the pinch of the absence of the most basic public infrastructure. The bulk of our people live in the dark – without hope of power any time soon. The same frustrated ones who have to pay through the nose to provide their own electricity are supposed to crack open bottles of champagne to celebrate some new statistic that has no bearing on their lives.

    Here is one statistic that shows why many are so cynical. South Africa which we have just ‘overtaken’ generates over 45,000 megawatts of electricity; Nigeria with her grand GDP figures can only manage a little over 3,000 megawatts.

    Still, we should be grateful for little mercies. The ongoing numbers storm has focused attention on what is important: the state of the economy and the ability to turn it around – rather than mundane matters like religion and ethnicity. It should now be the key test as we edge towards electing a new set of leaders in 2015.

    Former United States President Bill Clinton rode into office in 1992 hammering on the parlous state of the economy. Jonathan’s leadership over this critical area of national life should come under scrutiny. So also should the credentials of his potential rivals who think they can do a better job.

  • The confab and the media

    A long with secession, restructuring and the appropriate titles by which self-important confreres may be addressed, media reportage is turning out to be another hot topic for discussion at the ongoing National Conference.

    Clearly, some delegates are not thrilled with the less-than-laudatory slant of reports published each day. Instead readers are still being served stories about goings-on that only those with a trained reportorial eye would see.

    At onset, the media set itself on the collision course with some after it published mirth-inducing pictures of some delegates succumbing to sleep after being assaulted by a couple of soporific presentations. Of course, there were those who had to take a nap on account of their advanced age. For this category it was understandable – after all, the Holy Scriptures say that our old men would dream dreams! So they were doing what comes naturally!

    But rather than see the funny side of things, some individuals with outsize egos began to push for withdrawal of accreditation of any newspaper which reported proceedings in unflattering light. Thankfully, more perceptive delegates quickly snuffed out this clumsy attempt at censorship.

    This breed, however, die hard. Last week they reared their heads again with the same old complaints. Rather than push for outright expulsion of offending reporters they now want them excluded from covering certain sessions.

    It is amazing how quickly people begin to see themselves as special. If you are discussing Nigerian issues why lock yourself away from media scrutiny? I doubt if there’s any idea that is so novel being discussed at this conference that has not come up in past constitutional conferences in the last 50 years. Even the most dreaded prospect – secession – has been broached. So what else is new under the sun that has to be discussed away from the hearing of Nigerians?

    I would suggest that delegates at the conference should make every effort to be humble. They are not elected representatives of the people. They are not recognized by the Nigeria constitution. They are a creation of the president without legal underpinning.

    The constitution confers upon the Nigerian media the right to report and inform the people. They don’t have to report to please delegates, but do their jobs as they judge professionally correct. Rather than try to constrain reporters from carrying out their duties, these touchy delegates might as well scrap press coverage so that the conference officially becomes a secret society. Who cares really?

  • A Mugabe tongue-lashing

    A Mugabe tongue-lashing

    Nigeria has finally protested to the Zimbabwean government remarks by the country’s president, Robert Mugabe, a few weeks ago about corruption in Nigeria.

    He had sparked by outrage on March 15 when, when in speaking of deepening corruption in Zimbabwe at an event marking his 90th birthday asked his audience: “Are we now like Nigerians where you have to reach into your pockets to get anything done?”

    I suspect that Nigerian officials who protested didn’t do so over the veracity of the assertion seeing as there’s nothing new in what the ancient dictator said they we don’t tell ourselves every day. It just rankles when it comes from an outsider.

    That said, no one should be too surprised about the broadside. Mugabe is a notorious loose-cannon whose victims include everyone from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former United States President George W. Bush and even the incumbent, Barack Obama.

    For 34 years he has ruled his country with an iron hand – destroying its economy in the name of land reforms which were actually just a political ploy to secure his position. Using brutal means he has emasculated the opposition. He brazenly plays base tribal politics just to strengthen his grip on power.

    Mugabe is a disgrace to the continent. But he has managed to survive for more than three decades because timid and cowardly African leaders – wary of being at the receiving end of his acidic tongue – have not stood up to him. No surprise that he has turned that tongue on his one-time benefactor – Nigeria.

  • Lamido Adamawa and the secessionists

    Lamido Adamawa and the secessionists

    The stool of the Lamido of Adamawa is one of the most respected in Nigeria. But in many parts of this country – especially the southern extremities – its present occupant, Muhammadu Barkindo Mustapha, is largely unknown. Last week at the National Conference in Abuja, he introduced himself in spectacular fashion to a countrywide audience.

    Called to comment on the voting formula by which decisions would be taken at the confab, he veered off on a riff threatening to ship his ancient kingdom off to Cameroon if certain trends he had noticed were not quickly checked.

    The outrage that greeted his tirade had as much to do with the fact that he deviated from the matter at hand, and went off on a tangent, as much as it had to do with him openly threatening secession. Some have even come down hard on conference chairman, Justice Idris Kutigi for allowing the Lamido to vent his feelings in such a manner. But that would be failing to acknowledge that the chairman’s options for shutting him up were limited.

    Traditional rulers are by nature conservative. They are more likely to speak like diplomats rather than be caught lobbing verbal bombs. In that wise, I was slightly surprised at the sentiments ventilated so openly by the Lamido. Again, his comments seem to go against the grain because secession is not an agenda that most would associate with the North.

    If anything, the region and its people have often been painted as the section of this country most desperate to retain Nigeria as a going concern. Its leaders are always to be found pressing the notion that the unity of this country is non-negotiable.

    Even the Boko Haram insurgency that has devastated the North East is not so much about breaking away, as it is about overthrowing the existing secular order and imposing a radical Islamist agenda on the country as a whole. Neither Abubakar Shekau nor his predecessor, Mohammed Yusuf, has ever indicated any desire to merge with Niger, Chad, or founding some theocratic Eldorado on the dunes of the Sahara.

    Down south, it is a totally different picture. Chaffing from years of perceived dominance of the power structures by Northerners, you would find plenty of would-be secessionists roaming the three zones.

    Even if you want to dismiss them as comic sideshows, you cannot ignore the fact that the spirit of Biafra lives on in the South East. It is what has kept an organisation like the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra alive for 15 years.

    So successful has the separatist franchise been that it is now giving rise to copycats and spin-off groups like the so-called Biafra Zionist Movement. Their main claim to fame so far has been the harebrained attempt by 50 its machete-wielding cadres to storm the Enugu State Government House with the intention of hoisting the Biafran flag. The misadventure ended with gun-toting policemen killing one of them and putting the rest to flight.

    A few kilometers down the road in the South-South zone, the likes of Asari Dokubo keep warning us that if President Goodluck Jonathan is not re-elected in 2015, the region would pull out of Nigeria taking its crude oil along. Empty threat? May be. But the fact is that is the thinking of influential individuals who have in the past taken up arms against the state, and have warned that they would not hesitate to return to the creeks in pursuit of their objectives.

    At some point the birth of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) was linked to a separatist sentiment that flowered briefly in the aftermath of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections won by the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola. But over the years the South-West has drifted towards to a consensus that some form of self-government within Nigeria wasn’t such a bad proposition.

    That has forced the once fiery and feared OPC to rebrand itself as a socio-cultural organisation that today limits its activities to providing protection and settling communal conflicts.

    This background shows that in today’s Nigeria there’s no paucity of the desire to separate. What is shocking is our capacity to live in denial and that remains a huge part of the reason why the country is not working.

    We head into conferences like the ongoing one saying the country’s existence as one country is not up for debate. But stopping our ears with cotton wool would not address the frustrations of the secessionists.

    We need to put such matters front and center of the discussions so all sides can decide once and for all whether it is more attractive to split peacefully – in the manner of the old Czechoslovakia; or whether we should make more of an effort at working out a formula that enables us to live amicably as one unit.

    Everything so far points to the fact that we are at best two countries – or even worse 10 or 20 countries rolled into one. We are so divided by religion that no amount of national conferences would end the rivalry between Christians and Muslims. That much is evident from the protest march to Aso Villa led by the Sultan of Sokoto to protest alleged marginalisation of Muslims in the make-up of delegates. Such is the depth of feeling over the issue.

    We are so divided by religion to the extent that a band of killers doing business under the Boko Haram banner would not rest until it has brought everyone under its dominion.

    Parts of North Central Nigeria are still seething on account of religious differences. It is so bad it is almost like India and Pakistan at independence. The only difference is that there are no clean dividing lines to separate the followers of the different faiths. The intermingling of Christians and Muslims is as complex in the South as it is in the most unlikely parts of the North East and North West.

    We are so divided by a sense of regional identification of North and South that mirrors the old British Protectorates welded together by Lord Lugard. Today, that same split is playing out in Abuja in the showdown over voting formula – the North insisting on three-quarters and the South on two-thirds majority.

    Fifty-two years after independence most people are more locked into their religious and regional identity as Northerners and Southerners, Christians and Muslims, than they are as Nigerians. Until we can deal with how these disparate peoples can relate in an artificial concept called Nigeria, we would continue to flush billions down the drain in so-called national conferences.

    It all begins by facing the fact that the sentiments expressed by the Lamido are things people mutter about in their homes every day. Such matters ought to be on the table in any conference that would truly address our national question.

  • Recycled leaders and sleeping delegates

    Recycled leaders and sleeping delegates

    Our condolences to the family of retired Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG), Hamma Misau, a delegate at the ongoing National Conference who died last Thursday at the National Hospital in Abuja. Misau was 67 when he passed on.

    He became the subject of widespread caustic comments after photographs of him asleep during a session of the confab went viral. The publication of the pictures stirred some individuals with an anti-democratic temper to attempt to gag media covering the conference. And that from persons charged with charting the course for a new Nigeria!

    All week I have had interesting exchanges around this business of some of the more elderly delegates feeling the strain and nodding off in the course of discussions. Someone wondered why the some of the same names who had been in the mix from the 60s and 70s – and have contributed to turning the country on its head – are the ones we are looking up to for deliverance.

    My position is that there is place for the older delegates because of their institutional memory. Their experience and knowledge is vital in this sort of exercise. I noticed for instance that in responding to the Lamido of Adamawa’s secessionist threat in a newspaper report last week, elder statesman Chief Olaniwun Ajayi began talking about something that happened in 1947!

    Some people may see recycling of gray-haired leaders going on, but my perspective is that there’s nothing wrong if some of those who contributed to messing up Nigeria are made to clean up the mess they created.

  • New states? Not again!

    A report in The Nation last week spoke of pressure on members of the National Assembly Committee on Constitution Review to create new states. Already, as many as 57 requests are pending before the legislature.

    As I understand it some elements within the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Presidency see this as some sort of trump card that could give them an edge in national elections next year.

    Whatever may be the selfish calculations driving it, the push for new states is nothing short of scandalous. The bulk of the existing 36 states are insolvent. Most of them cannot pay workers’ salaries. Lots cannot survive without the monthly hand out from the Federation Account.

    The performance of these entities has exposed the limit to which state creation can be a tool for developing the country. Much of what passes for development activities begin and end in these one-street state capitals.

    This is not just about the ingenuity of governors in imposing more tax burdens on hapless citizens in the name of generating internal revenue. It is about the fact that the cash from the center cannot carry the lumbering bureaucracies and expense outlets that would come with the so-called new states. All reasonable people should oppose this nonsense.

  • Immigration: Comedy in a time of tragedy

    Immigration: Comedy in a time of tragedy

    Government officials scrambling to explain the inexplicable have offered all sorts of excuses for the avoidable deaths of 19 young, job-seeking Nigerians. But the only explanation that makes sense is that when a similar tragedy happened six years ago, those who presided over it got away scot free.

    Back in July 2008, a recruitment exercise conducted by the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) and Nigerian Prison Service (NPS) produced a grim toll of 17 dead across the country.

    That is why I totally agree with President Goodluck Jonathan who has reportedly told his cabinet that the next time this sort of debacle occured, the minister responsible would be tried for culpable homicide.

    Our prayer is that we never experience the likes of last weekend’s horror show. But if history repeats itself and someone actually faces justice for it, I would be one of those cheering the government of the day to the rafters.

    However, the tough talk was about the only thing of worth to come out of official quarters all week over the matter. The rest was just sentimental slop and annoying phrases like “the deaths were unfortunate.” It makes you wish officials would clam up when they don’t have anything to say.

    Take the case of the sorry Minister of Interior, Abba Moro. Salt has been rubbed into compounded injury by his continued stay in the cabinet. Decency would have required he stepped aside without being pushed. President Jonathan who could have put him out of his misery would leave him to twist in the wind a little bit longer in order not to seem to be caving in to pressure from critics.

    While he goes through the motions of presidential posturing, it is our lot to suffer Moro who, as he fights to stave off the inevitable, appears to have come down with a bad case of foot-in-the-mouth disease.

    Trying to come across as empathetic after his initial stumbles, the minister referenced his past as a labour activist and said he understood what it meant to be unemployed. Thank God he’s been a unionist; but he’s never been dead. So he cannot appreciate what the victims or their families feel.

    Rather than accept that the buck stopped at his desk, he’s been looking everywhere for someone to pass it to. He blamed the social media. He accused doctors, bankers, teachers and other gainfully employed people who he said swarmed NIS recruitment centers looking to be hired and triggering stampedes. Why would they do that when they already had jobs?

    According the minister’s aide, a certain Mallam Salisu Dantata Muhammed, it was all about greener pastures. “The crowd got more desperate when they learnt that they could get Foreign Service postings and then become pensionable. So doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, and all manner of people who had paid jobs turned up and increased our dilemma.”

    Let’s assume for a moment that there’s something to Moro’s theory. What does the picture he has painted say about Nigeria of 2015? What does it say about the competence of the administration in which he serves? He speaks of a country from which thousands of doctors, bankers, nurses, teachers and others are looking desperately to flee courtesy of Foreign Service posting.

    Aside the prospect of deliverance through foreign posting, we are to believe that thousands also stormed the stadia in different cities just imagining the glorious pension benefits the NIS offers!

    There’s no other way to spin it. What happened last Saturday was a catastrophic public relations outing for the government of the day. It captures the inability to provide jobs in graphic and unflattering terms. It illustrates the people’s desperate economic plight in terms that not even the harshest opposition critic could have done.

    Aware of the gravity of what just took place, the president has moved into damage-control mode. He rolled out palliatives to soothe the grief and rage of bereaved families. For those who died, their families would be given three employment slots. Those who were wounded were given one slot each.

    I dare say that a job with the NIS is poor exchange for a life. Luckily for the living, some would soon become families chock full of Immigration officers!

    For the merely injured who did not pay the supreme sacrifice to ensure their families would be employed by the Federal Government for generations, there is still much to celebrate. Even if you are a dullard and probably got yourself wounded by making a dumb move last weekend, a few bruises here and there have yielded spectacular dividends.

    This brings us to the hundreds of thousands who went home in one piece. Imagine how they rejoiced seven days ago that they did not return home in body bags or in air-conditioned Ministry of Interior ambulances. Now, seeing what luck has befallen the departed many, surely, would be wishing they were dead, or at least, injured! Now they are left high and dry. If only someone had been visionary enough to engage in some self-inflicted injury! Well…

    People would argue that the government had to respond in some way. I agree. The point of cavil is that whatever was to be done should have thought through, and not be some cynical, self-serving, sentimental, knee-jerk sop.

    This is because parallels would be drawn. What, for instance, makes the victims of the Immigration recruitment tragedy more deserving of compensation than the faceless, nameless thousands who have fallen to the brutality of Boko Haram?

    Many have campaigned for some sort of compensation for them. But government has stated over and again that it would do nothing of the sort. So what logic now makes compensation right for one set of victims and wrong for the other?

    Don’t look too far for answers: it’s all down to political expediency. Given the vociferous outcry over what happened last Saturday any politician’s prospects could be damaged – even in a crude, desensitised environment such as ours.

    Desperate situations, to succumb to an equally desperate cliché, call for desperate actions – even if that means being accused of hypocrisy and double standards from now until February 2015!

  • Jonathan and his ‘sponsored’ troubles

    Jonathan and his ‘sponsored’ troubles

    In the world according to PDP National Publicity Secretary, Olisah Metuh, all of President Goodluck Jonathan woes have been sponsored or engineered by the opposition in their ‘desperate’ bid to deny him another term in office. The troubles have also been stirred apparently because our longsuffering leader is from a minority ethnic group.

    Without doubt the pressure of having to respond to quick-fire attacks of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) must be immense. But that is no excuse not to think about the credibility of statements that are made in the name of not just any organisation – but the country’s ruling party.

    Although, Metuh might find it hard to believe, Nigerians are not brainless idiots who can’t think. They still have the capacity to see through much of the spiel that gets projected into the political space by dueling party spokesmen.

    Aside this latest outlandish serving, the PDP scribe has in the past accused the suspended Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, of giving billions of naira to unnamed APC leaders. Till date he has conveniently not named the recipients of the dodgy contracts.

    He has equally accused the opposition of having a so-called “Janjaweed ideology.” The Janjaweed militia is notorious for its atrocities in the Darfur region of the Sudan. By lumping APC with this group, the PDP spokesman is returning to his party’s old line of trying to paint the opposition as biased in favour of Muslims.

    This is dangerous territory because in his excitement, Metuh has not thought of how much offence he is causing amongst a segment of the populace who follow a particular faith. He is also opening up his party and our church-hopping president to charges of subscribing to a “Vatican or Canterbury ideology.” If APC is for Muslims, is PDP for Christians simply because the president is a Christian? Nothing could be more nonsensical.

    But now Metuh has outdone himself. The Boko Haram insurgency is about the biggest security headache confronting the government. It didn’t start under Jonathan. Indeed, the extra-judicial slaying of the sect’s erstwhile leader, Mohammed Yusuf, occurred under President Umaru Yar’Adua. It has festered because it took the current incumbent four long years to understand that the terrorists operating in the North East could not be handled with kid gloves.

    Again, the communal clashes and killings involving Fulani militias and the indigenous communities across the Middle- Belt didn’t start under Jonathan, and therefore could not have been sponsored by an opposition that didn’t exist three or four years ago.

    In Metuh’s world it was the opposition that invited 700,000 hapless young Nigerians to test for 5,000 job spaces. The APC then set off stampedes across several recruitment centers just to discredit Jonathan!

    Instead of being paranoid, the ruling party should face the fact that after five years in power the president now has a record over which he can be challenged. If it seems as if he’s always being attacked, it is because there’s so much to attack in his record!

    Yes, some people in heat of the electoral contest for the PDP presidential ticket in 2011 said they would make the country ungovernable if Jonathan won. Can we then credibly link the recent kidnapping of the president’s uncle in Bayelsa to this threat?

    Has it occurred to the likes of Metuh that the infamous 2011 statement might just have been hot air coming from frustrated old men who didn’t have the means to carry out their threats?

    In any event, since the PDP is certain that these same persons working in league with the opposition are behind the turmoil in Nigeria, why haven’t they used the security agencies they control to arrest and prosecute the offenders? I suspect it is because not a shred of evidence exists to support the wild charges.

  • Gusau and the generals

    Gusau and the generals

    The drama over newly-installed Minister of Defence, Gen. Aliyu Mohammed Gusau’s (retd) continued membership of the federal cabinet may have blown over for now, but unless the fundamental issues that brought the matter to a head are resolved, there could be consequences for the war in the North East.

    The trigger that nearly forced the minister to quit barely one week after assuming office was his attempt to hold a meeting with the service chiefs. After giving him the runaround for a couple of days, the military brass mandated Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Air Marshall Alexander Badeh, to represent them.

    When it became clear that the service chiefs were sending him a clear message, an infuriated Gusau then made it clear he could not work with officers who would not respect his authority.

    To get a sense of perspective, it is important to remember that the position of CDS is a creation of the 1979 presidential constitution. Like most things in that document, it has an American equivalent – Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The first person to serve in that role was Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade (retd) who was appointed in 1980.

    Concerning this office, the Armed Forces Act of 1993 as amended in the 1999 constitution states: “The Chief of Defence Staff shall subject to the general direction of the president and of the National Assembly be vested with the day to day command and general superintendence of the Armed Forces.”

    The CDS reports to the President/Commander-in-Chief and has the minister as his administrative supervisor. His responsibility is to formulate and execute policies and ensure the operational competence of the Army, Navy and Air Force. He is assisted in this assignment by the Chiefs of Army, Navy and Air Force Staff.

    The minister for his part is the political head of the Ministry of Defence and has two principal advisers – a civilian Permanent Secretary and the CDS. It is through the minister that the executive conveys policy directives which the military would implement. While he is clearly in the chain of authority, that does not extend to command and control and other operational issues which are left to the professional soldiers irrespective of whether the minister is a former military officer.

    If the roles of these two powerful individuals are so clear cut, how did we end up with this crisis? In the 34 odd years that the post of CDS has existed. I cannot recall an instance when there was this open turf war between Minister and CDS. Significantly, when Badeh met Gusau, he reportedly said the ‘military’ had met and their position was that it was not necessary for the service chiefs to be present at the encounter.

    That immediately raises some questions. Does the minister have authority to summon the service chiefs for a meeting without going through the CDS? What is the existing tradition regarding this? When civilians like Rabiu Kwankwaso, Haliru Mohammed, Shettima Mustapha and others were ministers did they summon the service chiefs for such meetings? What sort of reception did they get?

    Gen. Gusau is one of Nigeria’s most celebrated military officers and one of the oldest surviving generals. So you would expect that he would be sure of where he stood in calling such a meeting. In the same way you would expect the services chiefs to know what they are doing in taking the position they have staked out.

    So what is going on here? What has changed in the basic rules of engagement to provoke both sides digging in?

    The answer could lie in the process leading to the return of Gusau to the cabinet. It is not news that before he agreed to rejoin President Goodluck Jonathan’s team, he gave conditions under which he would serve. Among other things he asked for an enhanced role as coordinating minister overseeing the security forces. He wanted a free hand to operate and leeway to do whatever was necessary to address the security challenges facing the nation.

    My sense is that if this was the existing arrangement, it would simply be a case of an individual slotting into the system and carrying on. The fact that such specific demands were made by Gusau suggests that this was novel and uncharted territory.

    The demands, which have not been denied by the general, would make him a sort of super minister in the mould of Coordinating Minister on the Economy and Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. But whereas the former World Bank chief managed to pull it off complete with the mouth-filling nomenclature, whatever Gusau agreed with the president remains a secret between them.

    The upshot is that the secret agreement has now come up against the brick wall of legal reality. It is not as if everyone accepted Okonjo-Iweala’s role without cavil. Some pointed out the amplified portfolio usurps the constitutional role of the Vice President who as chairman of the National Economic Council (NEC) should coordinate the economy.

    But if Vice President Namadi Sambo chose not to make waves, the same cannot be said of the military who have it in their DNA to do battle. And it all revolves around the provisions of the National Security Agencies Act. Their interpretation of the invitation to meet the minister was that it was a creeping way of getting them to start reporting to Gusau – something they were leery of doing without an amendment of the National Security Agencies Act.

    The trouble with the legal position is that it is an axe that either side can wield – not just the serving generals. For instance, under Section 217 of the Nigerian constitution, and Section 7 of the Armed Forces Act, the president has powers to issue commands directly to the military brass. But the same constitution allows the president to delegate his powers to ministers. Under those conditions does Gusau not have enough wiggle room to do what he wants to do?

    As at the time of writing this piece, the stalemate remained unresolved. Apologies may have been delivered on questions of etiquette, but on all the fundamental issues the soldiers have refused to budge.

    President Jonathan needs to act one way or the other. He can either give Gusau the sort of public backing for the terms he asked for before coming on board, or simply insist that that whatever system has been functioning seamlessly for 34 years is kept in place. After all, the Americans and British have similar structures and are not being treated to unseemly public spats by senior members of their security establishment.

    Feelings would be hurt and some could be demoralised, still Jonathan is the Commander-in-Chief. He must act swiftly to squash the Abuja turf wars so the most important people – the troops – can focus on the raging shooting war threatening to consume the North East and more.