By Niyi Akinnaso

Throughout human history, calls for the reorganization of the polity have taken various forms. In many cases, the agitations for reorganization are framed in terms of demands for certain concessions, certain rights, and the ability to do certain things within the agitators’ geographical space. In federal systems, such demands are couched in terms of devolution of powers to the federating units. The goal is to strengthen the federating units so they could exercise greater control over their own destiny, including managing their own resources, controlling their own police, and depending less and less on the central government, except for certain activities, such as national defence and foreign affairs.

In more extreme cases, the demands take the form of separatist agitation by which the agitators seek to constitute an autonomous entity. This is often a last resort by minorities locked in pluralist states, who feel cheated or neglected, such as Catalans in Spain;  Moros in the Philippines; Tamils in Sri Lanka; and the Igbo and Ijaw in Nigeria. Such separatist agitations often result from failure by the central government to take the calls for reorganization seriously enough in the first place.

However the agitation is expressed, it is often rooted in people’s experiences or fears of marginalization, oppression, cheating, or deprivation of access to desirable political goods, especially goods to which they feel entitled.

Both restructuring and separatist agitations are going on simultaneously in Nigeria today, against the backdrop of lingering social, political, and economic problems. Youth unemployment is at an all time high. So is the poverty index. Inflation is rising. So is the cost of living. The education and healthcare industries are in disarray. There is more decay than repair in infrastructure (roads, bridges, public buildings, water and power supply).

The agitations are exacerbated by rampant insecurity, the scale of which the nation has never experienced. Boko Haram is pummelling the Northeast. Bandits are maiming and killing in the Northwest. Fulani herders are rampaging farmlands and whole villages in other parts of the country. Everybody is feeling the heat. Farmers are afraid to go to their farms. Prowling kidnappers and armed robbers have made highways unsafe for travellers. Workers are scared to commute to work. People feel unsafe even in their own homes.

It has become apparent that the federal government alone cannot solve these problems. Yet, the states have neither the powers not the resources to act.

It is within the above contexts that the Governors of the 17 Southern states came together recently to agree on the way forward, echoing popular demands by their respective constituents. They issued a communique in which they agreed on 12 key issues, including (1) the decision to ban open grazing of cattle in any of their states, being the source of agony and low agricultural productivity in their states; (2) the call to the Federal Government to review appointments to Federal agencies in line with the Federal Character principle; and, most importantly, (3) the need to restructure the country in order to achieve true federalism, including the devolution of powers, the establishment of state police, and the review of the revenue allocation formula in favour of the federating units.

This last issue on restructuring really is the main focus of the Governors’ recommendations. Others are supportive political or diplomatic additions.

Not unexpectedly, the opposition to their recommendations has come largely from the North, including a jaundiced statement credited to the presidency; an uninformed reading of the constitution by Attorney General Abubakar Malami; and the questioning by some Northern politicians of the audacity of the Southern Governors to speak on behalf of their own people.

While attacking the position of the Southern Governors, none of the Northern critics offered alternative solutions to the national problems highlighted by the Governors. Columnists, who castigated the Southern Governors, either for offering well known solutions or for not going far enough, missed the symbolism of a joint position on 12 issues by 17 of the country’s 36 state Governors from three different political parties (9 PDP, 7 APC, 1 APGA), representing three of the country’s six geopolitical zones and about half of the country’s population.

It is reasonable, however, to ask of the Southern Governors, What next? There are several additional steps they must take. First, they must all speak henceforth with one voice on the issues they agreed on, both in public and in private. They have so far done so, and they must continue.

Second, They must mobilize their constituents-monarchs, religious leaders, opinion leaders, party leaders, and sociocultural organizations to sing the same song with them. Again, fortunately, Afenifere, Ohaneze, and APC leaders in the Southwest have thrown in their support.

Third, it is particularly necessary for all their House Assembly members as well as their representatives at the National Assembly to work arduously on their agenda. In particular, the states should follow the lead of Ebonyi, Ekiti, Ondo, and Oyo in passing anti-grazing laws in order to provide necessary constitutional backing for their declaration.

Fourth, the Southern Governors must work with their representatives in the NASS to pursue their agenda for whatever it is worth, should any of them ever come to the floor of either chamber. For whatever it is worth, the Governors jointly should prepare memoranda on relevant items on their agenda that each of them will submit to the Constitution Review Committee of the NASS, when it sits in their zone.

In pursuance of this objective, they should seek the support of like-minded Governors in the North, especially in the North-Central, to have their NASS members support the Southern Governors’ agenda. It is worth emphasizing that the 17 Southern states have as many as 51 Senators in a 109-member chamber. If they are unanimous in their voice, all they need to win on any bill is 5 additional Senators or more. Similarly, they have 169 members in a 360-member House of Representatives. They need additional 12 members or more to win.

There are, however, reasons to doubt the usefulness of additional national dialogue as suggested by the Governors. The nation’s recent history shows that the government has never acted on the resolutions of previous dialogues, not even the ones organized by the political party in power.

What is needed is an engineered path to restructuring, the like of which the Southern Governors have initiated. They must stand by their resolution and continue to work out the details through necessary constitutional channels.

By Niyi Akinnaso

Olabiyi Babalola Joseph Yai had an unobtrusive personality. He was affable, warm, forthcoming, kind, and liberal. He was a true omoluabi. You needed to be close and engage him in discussion or read his work to discover that he was also a polyglot, a polymath, and a transnationalist. These attributes came through in his professional undertakings as an academic and a diplomat.

Born in 1939 to Yoruba parents in Sabe, Benin Republic, Yai was raised as a lone child. However, he became a child of the world and his global family grew with his academic training; his professional development; and his diplomatic engagements. The location of Sabe, the old capital of the Yoruba kingdom, in Benin Republic, rather than Nigeria, made Yai realize early how the Europeans manipulated the African continent. Little did he realize that he would later participate in assessing the impact of the manipulation.

Yoruba language, culture, and philosophy formed the basis of Yai’s scholarship and outlook on life, because his learning began at the feet of Yoruba village elders and from watching local festivals and rituals. True, he studied French language and literature at the Sorbonne in France, where he was persuaded by to continue with French studies after his first degree, he decided to steep himself in Yoruba studies, which led him to the University of Ibadan to study Yoruba linguistics. He taught briefly at Ibadan but later joined the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University).

It was at Ife I met Yai as a colleague-he in African Studies and I in Linguistics. We would later reconnect in the United States-he at the University of Florida at Gainesville and I at Temple University in Philadelphia. He and Goran Hyden invited me to Florida in 1992 to participate in the Carter lecture series. Our bond was re-kindle and we occasionally exchanged visits until he joined UNESCO in Paris.

It was during this second encounter that it became apparent that we shared a common exposure to Ifa’s unparalleled textuality and the associated rites and rituals. Although we made little of Ifa as youths, its centrality to Yoruba culture, philosophy, epistemology, and worldview gradually dawned on us and came to shape our encounter with scholarship as business. We were engaged in the business of exegesis like the Ifa priests we encountered.

But there was much more to Yai beyond our encounters. He was a true polyglot. He spoke and read Yoruba, English, French and Portuguese, among others. This linguistic template gave him access to a wide range of literature on Yoruba in particular and Africa in general.

Multilingualism also suited the wide nest of his intellectual engagements as a polymath. Yai was at once a linguist, philosopher, cultural historian, literary critic, and, I would add, a pseudo-anthropologist. This multi-disciplinary background allowed him to engage any topic from various perspectives.

We often disagreed whenever the topic was of anthropological interest, because he saw in anthropology no more than cultural translation. True, Maxwell Owusu, a Ghanaian anthropologist, critiqued the first generation of anthropologists of Africa along similar lines, but he did not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I tried to convince Yai that he should not paint all anthropologists with the same brush. At one end are expatriate anthropologists, seeking to understand other cultures. At the other extreme are indigenous anthropologists, such as Owusu and myself, who study our own culture and explain it to outsiders. However, these extremes are not absolute as various anthropologists fall into slots in between, depending on how much of the local language they acquire, how long they stay in the community, how frequently they revisit the same group, and how rigourously they engage the appropriate methodologies and theoretical perspectives. Besides, anthropology is not a monolithic discipline as it encompasses cultural, linguistic, archaeological, biological, and visual specialties and engages material across the humanities, the social sciences, and even the hard sciences.

Yai revisited my argument with a nod only after reading my article, Schooling, Language, and Knowledge in Literate and Nonliterate Societies, published in the Cambridge Journal, Comparative Studies in Society and History. I teased him that only anthropology could provide the perspective of knowing that informed the article and we both laughed, but not without his teasing back: “Well, Niyi, Ifa lo foo’re fun e, by which he meant it was not anthropology; it was the blessing of Ifa, the very focus of the article.

Yai was as much a polymath as he was a transnationalist. He held academic positions in Africa (Nigeria and Benin), North America (USA), Latin America (Brazil), the Caribbean (Haiti and Cuba), Europe (Birmingham and France), and Asia (Japan). He also held consultancy positions in culture and language policy across West Africa.

However, it was his appointment as Benin Republic’s Permanent Representative to UNESCO that capped his transnationalism. He travelled widely and participated at the highest levels of the development of UNESCO’s programmes. He served on various UNESCO committees, including the World Heritage Committee; the Committee of the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture; the International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route Project; the Jury for the designation of Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage; the Board of Trustees of the Africa World Heritage Fund (AWHFD); and President of the Culture Commission of UNESCO G77. Above all, he became the Chairman of the Executive Board of UNESCO.

These appointments put Yai at the centre of decision making, especially on issues relating to Africa. Accordingly, he was on the team that revisited the horrific past of Africa through the experiences of slavery, colonialism, economic exploitation, cultural bastardisation, and the theft of African art, including the majestic artwork of the Benin palace that came to be known as the Benin bronze collection. How I wish Yai were alive to witness the imminent repatriation of these magnificent pieces!

Yai’s life and scholarship were marked by three cyclical themes. First, he was born Yoruba and he returned to Yoruba language and culture after studying French at the Sorbonne in Paris. Second, he would return to the Sorbonne briefly to teach and finally to Paris to work for UNESCO. Third, Yai’s study of Yoruba culture involved trans-continental studies, connecting the Yoruba homeland in Nigeria and Benin Republic with the Yoruba in the Diaspora. These studies affirmed the centrality of Ifa to the survival of Yoruba culture in the Diaspora and led to Yai’s idea of Global Africa.

By Niyi Akinnaso

 

“When you catch criminals, you always get Fulani among the group because of their lack of education, their ignorance and their poverty.”

 

—Othman Ngelzarma, Secretary General of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, speaking at the Arewa Consultative Forum on Thursday, April 8, 2021

 

Once you begin to explain why you hit someone in the face, you have already admitted that you committed the offense—that you, indeed, hit someone and that, possibly, it was not even in the face alone. Such was the case with the explanation offered for Fulani cattle herders’ criminality by the Secretary General of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, Othman Ngelzarma. Speaking at the Arewa Consultative Forum on Thursday, April 8, 2021, in his capacity as Secretary General of MACBAN, Ngelzarma must be deemed to have spoken for the Association.

As such, this would be the first official admission by MACBAN that Fulani herdsmen are among the criminals, who have been plundering farmlands and committing various crimes, including rape, murder, and the kidnapping of their victims for ransom. This is very significant: Rather than obscure the truth by shifting all the blame on foreign herders (from Mali, Niger, or Chad) or on some uncategorized bandits, as some Northern leaders have been doing, Ngelzarma hit the nail on the head.

Victims of the atrocities of Fulani herdsmen, who have been cowed into avoiding to name their assailants for who they are, can now feel free to call a spade a spade. They can now ignore the politicization of Fulani herdsmen’s atrocities by Fulani leaders and other politicians, who cry ethnic stereotyping whenever some Fulani herdsmen are pinpointed as criminals.

Even presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, once warned against linking herdsmen’s atrocities with a particular ethnic group: “… to define crime from the nameplates … which group they belong to, the language they speak, their geographical location or their faith is atavistic and cruel … We need to delink terrorism and crimes from ethnicity, geographical origins and religion.” The question is: How do we catch and bring the criminals to book if we don’t know who they are, the language they speak, and where they come from?

Shehu’s choice of words is fascinating, to say the least. Take the word “atavistic”, which invokes reversion to practices of an earlier period. If anything is atavistic about the topic at hand, it is the insistence of the Fulani on a nomadic way of life in this modern age, when other cattle-rearing nations have moved way beyond that practice, for example, to adopting ranching and employing hydroponic technology to grow grass from cereal to feed their livestock.

Interestingly, MACBAN moved us closer to the modern age by suggesting that the pastoralists be settled in grazing reserves: “We have over 400 grazing reserves in the country but only three are in the Southwest – Oyo and Ogun. All the other grazing reserves are in the North. Put together, there are about five million hectares. If these can be utilised, it is enough to settle these … pastoralists.”

This suggestion is not new. Northern Governors recently supported ranching as the way to go. Some of them, such as Governor Umar Ganduje of Kano, have actually embarked on ranching projects, while many others are still reluctant to do so, either because they lack the political will to move ahead or because they are waiting for assistance from the Federal Government.

What is new in the MACBAN Secretary General’s suggestion is the need to settle pastoralists in one place in order to educate them. This is a direct acknowledgement of the pastoralists’ lack of education as well as the failure and rejection of nomadic education in meeting their educational needs.

The question about Federal Government assistance to livestock farmers generated national controversy, when the Federal Government attempted to reintroduce Rural Grazing Areas (RUGA), a 1946 colonial policy long disrupted by urban development and land grabbing practices. The controversy was not unconnected with the bad blood already generated by the Federal Government’s inchoate responses to the herdsmen-farmers conflicts. There was also the argument that livestock farming is private business from which the Federal Government should stand clear.

However, it makes sense for the Federal Government to cast a wide net now in view of its focus on agriculture as central to its diversification and food security policies. Nevertheless, in order to be seen as fair, the Federal Government should not invest in livestock anymore than it invests in other agricultural products. The bottomline is that each state should assist its own farmers both to guarantee food security and to contribute to GDP. Whatever assistance the Federal Government wants to offer should be channeled through the state governments but made public so that the end users would learn about it.

The MACBAN spokesperson did not stop at blaming illiteracy and poverty for the herders’ criminality. He also cited cattle rustling as reason for the herders’ engagement in criminal acts. According to him, “The Fulani cattle breeders have lost over three million cows to cattle rustling. We sleep as wealthy people with lots of animals, but wake up as poor people due to cattle rustling”.

Was the loss of cattle enough reason for sponsoring the herders’ criminal activities, especially kidnapping? Your guess is as good as mine. But listen to the MACBAN spokesperson: “We all see on social media; when these herders who are engaged in crime are asked about how much was given to them out of millions collected from their victims, they would say N30,000, N40,000. This is to show that some big merchants are behind this.” This is an issue that the intelligence agencies should have investigated. The country’s weak security architecture, especially intelligence gathering, should be strengthened, if we are ever going to stop this vicious cycle of cattle rustling and kidnapping for ransom.

However, what MACBAN did not address is even more important than what it addressed since we always knew that illiteracy, poverty, and unemployment made youths ready recruits to banditry. MACBAN is silent on the herders’ access to dangerous weapons, especially AK-47, which emboldens them to engage in criminal acts. After all, there are millions of illiterate, poor, and unemployed youths in rural areas across the country who do not engage in kidnapping for ransom. It is high time MACBAN took a strong position on weapons ban for herders unless it still has something to hide.

 

 

 

 

 

By Niyi Akinnaso

As Nigeria spends billions of Naira to purchase drugs, PPEs, establish new labs for PCR tests, and supplement coronavirus vaccines donated by COVAX to combat COVID-19, the small island nation of Cuba has been swimming in self-sufficiency, by producing its own drugs, PPEs, and vaccines. It has commenced the vaccination of health workers with its own homegrown vaccine, the Soberana (Sovereign) 02. It is one of five vaccine candidates being developed in various laboratories in Cuba.

The feat did not just come overnight. It is a result of decades of investment in biotech and biopharmaceutical industries, leading to over 30 years of vaccine development by the island nation.

However, vaccine production is only one of Cuba’s major strategies to combat the scourge of COVID-19 in the country. In addition to the non-pharmaceutical measures adopted universally, particularly mask wearing, hand washing, and physical distancing, Cuba developed two key strategies to combat COVID-19.

The first strategy is the manufacture of drugs and medical equipment specifically to treat COVID-19 infections. Accordingly, the National Center of Biopreparations (Biocen) immediately focused on the manufacture of several of the main drugs used to treat COVID-19 infections.

Similarly, PPEs were produced and distributed to healthcare workers and then to all citizens to protect themselves. To this end, the Cuban government repurposed a school uniform factory to produce masks instead. Finally, a prototype ventilator was quickly produced and, once found effective, was later mass produced to treat COVID-19 patients. These efforts resulted from collaborations by the Neurosciences Center; the Grito de Baire Enterprise, affiliated with the Military Industries Union; the Center for the State Control of Medicines and Equipment and Medical Devices (CECMED); and the National Design Office.

Simultaneously, the government went full force into vaccine research, drawing upon its decades of experience in vaccine production and freely available literature on COVID-19 vaccines. Two preeminent labs in the country were deployed to this purpose. The Finlay Vaccine Institute focused on three vaccine candidates: Soberana 01, Soberana 02, and Soberana Plus.

The Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology produced the other two vaccines, namely, Abdala and Manbisa. Soberana 02 and Abdala. All five vaccines benefitted from preliminary work by the Center for Molecular Immunology, which “fermented” mammalian cells that directly produced the RBD antigen used in producing the COVID-19 vaccines. It is this method of vaccine production that made it possible for these vaccines to have little or no effect on their recipients.

Another interesting feature of Cuba’s vaccines is storage. Unlike other vaccines that require special temperatures for storage, the Cuban vaccines can be stored and transported at regular refrigeration temperature. This makes it very attractive to countries, which have difficulty with vaccines kept in unusually cold temperatures.

Of Cuba’s five vaccine candidates, Soberana 02 and Abdala have reached the most advanced stage of Phase III clinical trials, the former being a little ahead of the latter. Both have proved to be safe and effective in clinical trials, with little or no side effects. Even the World Health Organization has also confirmed that the two vaccine candidates in Phase III clinical trials were effective and safe in previous clinical trials. However, how effective on a large scale remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, many countries have already expressed interest in the Cuban VOVID-19 vaccines. They include Venezuela, Mexico, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, and Iran. Cuba is still open to partnerships with other countries in order to be able to ramp up production. Nevertheless, it hopes to vaccinate all of Havana, the main island, by the end of June and the rest of the country by the end of the year by which time it is hoped that 100 million doses would have been produced.

There are two unique features of the Cuban vaccine production technology. First, a nasally administered vaccine is added to its array of intramuscular vaccines. This nasal vaccine is Mambisa, now in Phase II Clinical Trial.

A second unique feature is the production of a vaccine specifically for convalescent patients, recuperating from treatment for COVID-19. This is supplemented with follow-up assistance from medical institutions through a Basic Work Group, consisting of specialist doctors, epidemiologists, and rehabilitation specialists. Cuba is so far the only country to have included this type of vaccine in its array of vaccines. Besides, no other country is pursuing as many as five vaccines simultaneously.

The Cuban effort should be understood against the backdrop of over 60 years of pernicious trade embargo imposed on the island nation by the United States, intensified recently by the regime of former President Donald Trump. The social, political, and economic sufferings resulting from the embargo were intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited Cuba’s exports and shut down the tourism industry, one of the mainstays of the Cuban economy.

In the face of the American trade embargo and the withdrawal of support by the Soviet Union, following its collapse, Cuba quickly decided to invest in human capital development, focusing on medical education, biotechnology, and the pharmaceutical industry. In Cuba, education is free at all levels, although it has a strong political and ideological emphasis. The fruits of the focus on education are threefold: One, Cuba’s literacy rate is one of the highest in the world, at 99.8 percent. Two, the supply of professionals, especially medical personnel, to other countries is one of Cuba’s major exports. Three, Cuba has developed skilled personnel and expertise in the production of drugs, vaccines, and medical equipment. No wonder then that Cuba has one of the best healthcare systems in the world.

No matter what one thinks about Fidel Castro and communism, one factor that cannot be denied is strong leadership and commitment to development. Until Nigeria has such a visionary leader we may have to continue to beg, even with money in hand, for drugs, medical equipment, and vaccines.

 

By Niyi Akinnaso

Donald John Trump, the 45th President of the United States, was an unusual leader, if ever he was one. He was autocratic, whimsical, and ruled on instinct. He flouted established institutional norms and basically ran the government like a Trump business. No wonder, his administration had the largest turnover of top officials in history.

No American President other than Trump has publicly pursued the policy of otherness, by openly insulting or denigrating others, especially Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, and Muslims. In a conversation about immigration, Trump referred to El Salvador, Haiti, and African nations as “shithole countries”. Even fellow politicians, who crossed his path, either by contesting against him or by opposing his policy, also earned one derogatory label or the other. He lashed out at others as much with his tongue as with his tweets. So vile and inciting were many of his tweets that his tweeter handle was pulled down.

His racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic behavior was supplemented with rosy promises of protecting America against immigration, globalization, world trade, and the outsourcing of American jobs, especially in the auto industry. He also promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington.  It soon became apparent that his campaign, and later governance, slogan, “Make America Great Again”, was a code for “Make America White Again”.

In no time, his base broadened beyond White Supremacists and Whites without a College degree to include far-right conspiracy theorists, such as QAnon, and extremist groups, such as Proud Boys. He courted them and they gave him a cultic following. The rank and file of the Republican party first tolerated and later adopted him, although not without notable exceptions. Luckily for him, his party controlled both Houses of Congress for two years and the Senate throughout his four-year term.

There are at least three reasons why the Republican party, which first attempted in 2016 to scuttle Trump’s candidacy, eventually warmed up to Trump. First, he delivered on some conservative projects on trade, border protection, and tax break for the rich. He also loaded various courts, including the Supreme Court, with Conservative justices. Second, Trump developed a cultic following from which Republican politicians wanted to reap electoral benefit. Third, it would appear that Trump’s discriminatory tendencies matched Republican basic instincts. They both oppose the expansion of minority access to resources.

Against the above backgrounds, there are many things for which Trump will be remembered. First, his anti-science stance drove him to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change on June 1, 2017.

But by far, his anti-science stance was best illustrated by his woeful handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He downplayed the recommendations of scientists, including members of his own Coronavirus Task Force, on basic mitigation measures. He scuttled federal plans to combat the virus, politicized mask wearing, and urged states to reopen prematurely. He staged events in the White House and held several political rallies, which were regarded as super spreaders. As a result of his negligence, millions of Americans, including him, were infected by the virus, while over half a million have died as a result.

Facing criticisms at home, Trump turned on China and the World Health Organization as coronavirus scapegoats. In his tirade against China, Trump variously called the coronavirus the China virus, the Chinese plague, and Conflu. As a result, he made Chinese in particular and Asian Americans in general targets of hate. He defunded the WHO and even threatened to withdraw the US from the Organization.

Second, a longtime skeptic of trade liberalization, Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and launched a trade war with China, by increasing tariffs on over 800 categories of Chinese imports worth over $50 billon. He also imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from various countries. As a result of his whimsical trade policies, the US trade deficit reached its highest level in 12 years.

Third, Trump manifested his love for autocracy by cozying up to autocrats, notably, Vladimir Putin of Russia; Kim Jong-un of North Korea; Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines; Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil; and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. The US gained nothing significant from his relationships with these autocrats.

However, some developments resulted from his alliance with Netanyahu. First, in a break with decades of official US policy, Trump moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Second, four Arab countries-The United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco, and Bahrain-normalized ties with Israel. As pointed out in Foreign Policy’s Year in Review, these countries were motivated by narrow interests, including Trump’s promise of favours or advanced weapons from the United States.

Fourth, according to CREW researchers, who tracked Trump’s conflicts of interest resulting from interactions between the Trump Organization and the American government during his presidency, Trump left a legacy of corruption. His administration was “marked by self-interest, profiteering … and more than 3,700 conflicts of interest”.

Fifth, Trump will be remembered for his unprecedented assault on American democracy. He denigrated the electoral system and claimed he won the 2020 presidential election, which he lost by 74 electoral college votes and over 7 million popular votes, as certified by all 50 states. He refused to concede the race and delayed the formal transition process. He filed over 60 cases in various courts, including the Supreme Court, and lost them all, except an inconsequential one. He unsuccessfully pushed electoral officials to “find votes” for him.

Not satisfied, Trump invited his supporters to Washington and incited them to march on the Capitol as the legislators were engaged in the certification of the results. The ensuing destruction involved five fatalities. Over 300 participants have been charged for various offenses. It was the worst domestic assault on the Capitol in history. Trump capped his refusal to concede the race by refusing to attend his successor’s inauguration as required by tradition.

This dent on American democracy and image abroad will take years to repair. Similarly, the deep divisions Trump has planted among fellow Americans will endure and manifest in various ways for years to come.

Finally, Trump remains the only American President to be impeached twice, one in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress and the other in 2021 for inciting an insurrection. Although he was acquitted by the Republican-led Senate on both occasions, the two impeachments will remain on his record as permanent indicators of institutional rejection of the Trump presidency.

By Niyi Akinnaso

Kidnapping. Abduction. Banditry. Robbery. Killing. Rape. Cultism. These are the major indices of insecurity in Nigeria today. That’s why, according to the Global Terrorism Index 2020, Nigeria is ranked the third country in the world most impacted by terrorism. It is also the reason Nigeria is ranked the 14th most fragile state, leading the Financial Times, in its editorial of December 22, 2020, to warn the Nigerian leadership to reset priorities in order to avert state failure.

As the scourge of insecurity rises across the country, the cry for solutions gets louder and louder. One persistent call stands out among the cacophonous suggestions. It is the call for the establishment of state police. The advocacy has come from numerous quarters, including Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and State Governors. Even former President Olusegun Obasanjo, once an opponent of state police, has made a U-turn.

There are at least three major reasons for the recent attention on state police. First, with the increase in frequency of these criminal activities, it is clear that the spaces in which they occur are grossly insecure. This is especially true of highway kidnappings and school abductions. It is believed that adequate police presence could prevent some of these crimes.

Second, state police is the standard in democracies, large and small, across the globe. In the United States, whose constitutional and governance model is adopted in Nigeria, the decentralization of the police goes down even beyond states and municipalities to universities, schools, hospitals, and highways.

Many observers feel that such decentralization shouldn’t even be a controversial issue at all in a country as large as Nigeria, with a population of over 200 million, spread over 36 states, a federal capital territory, and as many as 774 local government areas. When Nigeria was less than half of the present population, the police was decentralized to regions and local governments.

Third, since policing is a local function, it is imperative that police personnel be sufficiently familiar with their environment, usually from having lived or gone to school there and knowing the local history, language, culture, and prevalent social practices. The policy of moving police personnel across ethnic, linguistic, and religious boundaries in a country as vast as Nigeria, with hundreds of ethnolinguistic groups, is counterproductive.

Fourth, the establishment of various local vigilante groups and state security formations speaks to the inadequacy of police personnel in the country. Already, conflicts are occurring between these local formations and the police establishment. As more and more of these formations are established, such conflicts are bound to multiply. It is now time to consolidate local policing by decentralizing the force and unifying local policing by absorbing qualified personnel from existing local and state security formations.

At the same time, however, care must be taken to ensure that states will be able to effectively manage and finance local police. Two major fears have been expressed. One is the tendency for local authorities, especially politicians in power, to deploy the police to selfish errands, such as wreaking vendetta on political opponents.

While this cannot be ruled out, it is important to point out that such deployment is going on right now with federal police. For example, during elections, influential politicians often hire or otherwise deploy to intimidate political opponents. Besides, the police leadership once admitted that over 100,000 police personnel are attached to public office holders, organisations, and influential members of society!

The real problem is not so much with the politicians as with the corrupt political system and police establishment. Professional capacity building and concerted ethical reorientation of the police force will be needed to ensure best practices. However, such reorientation should be backed up with an upward review of their remuneration, which leads to the second fear expressed by opponents of state police.

It is the fear that state governments, already cash-strapped, may not be able to adequately fund state police. Again, states already have a heavy investment in the police, even while under the federal system. Stories of state governments purchasing vehicles and constructing office spaces and housing quarters for the police abound in various newspapers. Besides, states are currently funding one security formation or the other to meet the shortfall in police supply.

Nevertheless, funding is a genuine fear, which is why I suggested two weeks ago that a comprehensive solution was needed to combat insecurity in the country. Such a solution would include state police, the devolution of powers, resource control, fiscal federalism and reallocation of resources, and direct control of local governments by states.

Such an arrangement will not only provide the resources needed for states to fiscally manage their police force and improve local security, it will also provide a solution to other problems threatening national unity. One such problem is the persistent agitation for the recognition of ethnic nationalities and the demands for self actualization by various groups.

It must be emphasized, however, that the establishment of state police will not eliminate the cattle grazing problem, which has been pushing herders to the South with all its attendant problems. Nor will the creation of ranches anywhere in the country provide enough grazing opportunities for cattle. What is needed is investment in the production of fodder crops.

Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State has taken the lead in this regard with an initial investment of N88 million in the production of fodder seeds. According to the Coordinator of the Kano State Agro Pastoral Development, Ibrahim Garba Muhammad, the state also plans to invest in commercial fodder production in partnership with the private sector.

Other Northern Governors and indeed cow owners should borrow a leaf from Ganduje. They also should begin to invest in hydroponic technology widely employed in the livestock industry for sprouting grains as young tender grass. The technology improves water use efficiency and facilitates rapid and efficient growing within days on any scale in controlled rooms. What is more, hydroponic fodder is considered to be the best livestock feed.

Whether grass is grown the traditional way or by the hydroponic system, adequate security is needed to avoid destruction and theft. Accordingly, the earlier state police was established the better for these developments in particular and national security in general.

 

By Niyi Akinnaso

 

Almost six months ago, I offered a brief look at the Northern question in Nigeria as a direct analogy to Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of the Southern question in Italy (see The Northern question in Nigeria, The Nation, September 16, 2020). Both regions share similar traits in their respective countries in comparison to the other regions. In other words, the situation in Northern Nigeria vis-a-vis Southern Nigeria is similar to the situation in Southern Italy vis-a-vis Northern Italy. Call it a scissors comparison, if you like.

Northern Nigeria, like Southern Italy, bears the burden of all national woes, scoring far below Southern Nigeria on all indices of development-per capita income; contribution to GDP; industrial and manufacturing growth; unemployment and underemployment; out-of-school children; illiteracy; and poverty. Here’s how the outspoken governor of Kano, Nasir el-Rufai completes the picture of Northern underdevelopment: “Northern Nigeria has become the centre of drug abuse, gender violence, banditry, kidnapping, and terrorism. We have also been associated with a high divorce rate and breakdown of families.” Not a pretty picture at all.

You would think that these are enough serious problems for Northern leaders-political, traditional, religious, and business leaders-to focus on and solve. To be sure, some of them are concerned about these problems and are seeking ways to solve them. Notable among those who have expressed concerns over these problems are Governor el-Rufai and billionaire business mogul, Aliko Dangote, who recently warned that “Northern Nigeria will continue to fall behind, if the respective state governments do not move to close the development gap”.

Unfortunately, however, quite a number of Northern leaders have been much less concerned about these problems than they have been about cows and their herders. I will not grace their misguided statements or actions on the so-called herdsmen-farmers conflict in the South. This in itself is a mischaracterization of the problem. The real problem is the forceful occupation of farmlands in the South, first to use them for grazing cattle and then to colonize the occupied territory.

Read Also: Between Gumi, Bala Mohammed and El-Rufai

 

Whether this was a planned strategy by Northern Fulani cattle owners is immaterial. But it is a widely held perception by many a Southerner, partly because land occupation is deep-rooted in Fulani history and partly because it is in the body language of many a Northern leader up the ladder to the presidency. Or how else should the protracted silence by Northern leaders on the marauding exploits of herdsmen in the South be interpreted until the problem reached crisis point, when Southern leaders, local strongmen, and social activists began to engage in self-help to protect lives and livelihoods in their territories?

To be sure, some Northern leaders, such as Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi state, have taken back their irritating comments in support of weapon bearing herdsmen, while the President has gone even further, by issuing a shoot-at-sight order on AK47 bearing bandits, the misunderstanding of the plight of Southerners in the hands of killer herdsmen, kidnappers, and other bandits persists. And no apologies for the destruction of lives and livelihoods in the region has so far been issued. Nor has any compensation.

The truth is that the situation in the South is beyond banditry. This is especially true of the Southwest, which is being suffocated by the Fulani herdsmen and Hausa traders from the North and by the Igbo merchants from the Southeast. Go to any state in the Southwest, you find these two groups growing larger and larger.

On the one hand, there are Igbo traders, who have taken over major portions of market spaces in the cities and built houses and shopping malls all over the place. On the other hand, there are Hausa traders, also in the cities, in spaces they have occupied as Sabon Gari, to use their term for the settlements of strangers in their region.

For decades, these two groups have lived peacefully side by side with indigenes, occasional skirmishes occurring only when the settlers went overboard. It is a different matter, however, with marauding AK47 bearing Fulani herdsmen, some of whom have been identified as bandits, driving farmers from their farmlands and kidnapping, maiming, raping, and killing their victims.

The brazenness with which the herdsmen have carried out these acts and the absence of clearly perceived repercussions have incensed many observers at home and abroad. Clearly, no Southwest government is prepared to cede any land for grazing cattle as enough land has been ceded already to others.

It is very heartening, therefore, that Northern leaders have come to realize the need for ranching as a solution to the herdsmen-farmers conflicts. Northern governors have a duty to assist cow owners in their states in realizing this objective in much the same way as the old Western Region government assisted cocoa farmers through loans and training in the use of insecticides. I was among the youths trained to train farmers in my father’s village in the late 1950s.

At the same time, however, it is high time Southwest governments paid due attention to agriculture beyond sloganeering. The foley of dependency on tomatoes and other foodstuff from the North was demonstrated recently when food supply from the North to the Southwest was blocked by Northern traders, while pushing for compensation from the Federal Government for members killed and property destroyed during the EndSARS protest and the Sasa crisis in Ibadan.

Undoubtedly, it was a significant misstep by the Northern traders involved. Nevertheless, it added insult to the injury suffered by Southwest farmers, whose farms and prospective harvests were disrupted and destroyed by marauding herdsmen. It should serve as a notice to Southwest governments to beef up security and provide more support for agricultural production in the region.

In the final analysis, the Northern question should never be allowed to become a Southern question in Nigeria.

By Niyi Akinnaso

Since nothing happens in Nigeria these days without some political undertones, a semiotic analysis of insecurity in the country today cannot be undertaken successfully without recourse to politics. However, since no political analysis in the country is complete without recourse to the primordial factors of ethnicity, language, and religion, any semiotic analysis of insecurity in the country will also be incomplete without recourse to these primordial factors.

Nevertheless, the signs to be analyzed here are not merely the traditional symbolic (linguistic), iconic (pictorial), and symptomatic (correlational) signs. Rather, they are all and more at the same time. The actors speak the language of guns, bombs, and ransom. And they spare no time of day for their activities.

Taken together, the actors, their actions, and the discourses about them are signs of disruption and rupture, indicating a state on the verge of disintegration. At one extreme, the situation beckons the Haiti of Aristide days, when that country was at the height of hunger and devastating poverty. At the other extreme, it smells of Rwanda, Sudan, and the old Yugoslavia, all ravaged by ethnic and other divisions.

Herdsmen-farmers clashes and school abductions are two of the alarming signs of rupture in Nigeria today, The former has led to heated debates between Southern defenders of the victims and Northern defenders of the marauding herdsmen.  School abductions, on the other hand, have revealed the security lapses in the North and, by implication, the nation at large.

When school abduction first occurred in 2014, involving a little less than 300 girls in Chibok, Borno State, it appeared like a one-off event, never to be repeated. However, by negotiating their release with Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari inadvertently made abductions part of the large-scale scheme of kidnapping for ransom, which has been occurring across the country.

In contradistinction to Boko Haram, which is opposed to secular education, the abductors after them have no coherent ideology beyond money making as they are largely interested in the ransom to be collected.

Although still limited to the North, school abductions are now occurring more frequently.

The follow-up to Chibok took four years: In 2018, over 100 schoolgirls were abducted from Dapchi, Yobe state. However, it only took two years before the third incident occurred in December 2020, when over 300 students were abducted from Kankara, Katsina State.

Since last December, however, school abductions have become even more frequent, involving over 600 captives. Barely two months after Kankara, over 40 students and staff were abducted from Kagara in Niger state.

Less than 10 days later, another abduction took place in Jangebe in Zamfara state, involving 317 schoolgirls.

This short summary opens up various interpretations. First, it would appear that the bandits (a diverse collective, including kidnappers, armed robbers, herdsmen, and rustlers) now find school abductions more lucrative than kidnapping individuals on the highway. Accordingly, at least in the past few weeks, there appears to be a reduction of kidnapping on the highways in the South but a simultaneous spike of school abductions in the North.

Besides, the abductors seem to derive more profit from the publicity attending school abductions, thereby spurring political leaders to take quick action. This is attested by rate and speed at which the recent abductees were released. At least some state governors are known to have at least accommodated the abductors in some way in exchange for the abductees.

Second, recent school abductions have been taking place in the Northwest, where banditry has been going on for years. No state in the zone has been free from banditry in the last few years. In the absence of decisive action by the affected governments, these developments have now snowballed into the school abductions we’ve been witnessing in the last three months.

Third, the combination of Boko Haram’s onslaught on Western education, the rampant school abductions by bandits, and the reactionary closure of schools in several Northern states adds further complications to the already low literacy, out-of-school children, and poverty in the North.

While this may be viewed as a regional problem, it really is a national problem. For years, Northern poverty, illiteracy, and relatively low contributions to the nation’s GDP have been a drag on the entire national economy. So has pastoralism, which some Northern leaders call “the Fulani traditional way of life”, affected agricultural production, especially in the Middle Belt and the South, by causing destruction of farmlands in the hands of marauding herdsmen and their cows.

The critical followup to these developments should be a decisive national action, which the Federal Government has failed to provide. True, the President occasionally talks about these problems, the promised solutions have hardly materialized.

When school abductions are mapped onto other insecurity issues, and the demands for self actualization by various groups, we have a nation truly in crisis and on the verge of disintegration. This is further complicated by an economy further depressed by the COVID-19 pandemic; large-scale youth unemployment and underemployment; inadequate infrastructure; and raging ethnic and religious divisions, we have a nation on the verge of failure. This is the kind of failure the Financial Times recently warned Nigerian leaders to avert.

The present situation in the country does not show that the leaders have heeded this warning. It is now time to do so.

Simple, single solutions, such as  the establishment of state police or even fiscal federalism are no longer sufficient. What, for example, will state police do when the police is grossly under-staffed and under-equipped? How will a state struggling to pay salaries be able to meet these shortfalls in the short term?

A comprehensive solution is now needed that will involve all branches of federal and state governments; traditional and religious leaders; sociocultural organizations; nationalist agitators; civil society organizations; professional groups; university experts; youth groups; and so on. This list immediately points to the need for a national consensus on how best to save the republic.

A body can be set up immediately to review existing documents from the various national conferences and  present the recommendations to the larger body for necessary modifications. Ultimately, the National Assembly should work the ensuing recommendations into law before the 2023 presidential election. The goal should be to make the bill a mandate for the incoming President to implement.