The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Farewell to the magic muse

    Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Farewell to the magic muse

    Gone, the Magic Muse of Aracataca. In a manner similar to his wondrous tales, I can see him levitating towards the skies, a pen in one hand, a trumpet in the other, a rueful smile on his face. For his body is too precious, too imperishable for the grave’s cramping dungeon and its ravenous coven of worms. Beyond the clouds, Angel Gabriel is waiting for his famous namesake at Heavensgate, waiting expectantly for this curious mortal whose fame and flourish competed so triumphantly with those of hosts of heaven. And I can see the intrepid ‘Gabo’ later, negotiating a niche with a revolving door and a wide window through which he can continue to peep at the turbulent world he has left behind and watch how the strands of his magic narratives continue to unfold. Without a doubt, his dealings with other angels are likely to be contentious; for this Gabriel is a being who so often obeys his own rules; a spirit averse to time-worn routines and conventional thou-shalt-nots.. . .

    Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most influential literary figures in the past 100 years; and in literature in the Spanish language, his fame and impact are only rivaled by those of Miguel de Cervantes, the pioneering genius who gave the world the timeless Don Quixote. Veteran journalist and author of numerous novels and short stories, Marquez shook the world with the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1967, and literally rewrote the rubric of the narrative genre. Intensely political and socially committed, he assailed the incubi of colonial/imperial exploitation and social injustice in a language and style that made his narration of that exposure irresistible even to those being exposed. He settled, finally, the quarrel between History and Literature, Myth and Reality by making Politics the flexible Mediator between the four. He gathered the strands of our workaday life, wove them into tales with an indelible touch of weird wanderings and wonder. He erased – or extended – the traditional gulf between the probability of the improbable and the improbability of the probable. And therein lies the phenomenon which literary critics and avid name-givers have christened as “magic realism”, a terminology that has been with us for several decades now and which has been splashed rightly or wrongly on works from different parts of the world with little or no consideration for local peculiarities. Whatever name his style is called, in whatever critical lingo it is couched, Marquez is the master of the hint and hyperbole, of the awe in the story and the aura in its telling. His narrative invented other ways of perceiving reality, other ways of cognizing human existence, other ways of being human. That is why his works are so full of rumble and resonance. That is why his new realism unlinks the chains of the old one. That is why William Kennedy, the noted American writer, recommended that One Hundred Years of Solitude should be compulsory reading for the human race.

    Influence, or, better still, influentiality, comes naturally to women and men of Marquez’s stature. And he had it and made the best of it. His influence is easily seen in the literary sphere where he changed the content and form of the narrative genre since the last half of the 20th century. The other kind of influence, a little less easy to perceive, is his influence on the political scene (I almost said ‘destiny’!) of Latin America in a 20th century bloodied by military dictatorship and all manner of murderous incivilities. Marquez spoke out against evil. His voice was loud, insistent, unafraid. And when he spoke, the world listened, for he earned his space, his right to speak, his will to the Word. Not infrequently, his interventions made military dictators shake in their boots. Quite often, the people found their strength in his words. Like the great Pablo Neruda, his Latin American compatriot, he too made an unbreakable pledge to himself that the people would find their voices in his song. We must never underestimate the contribution of people like Marquez to the return of democracy to Latin America and other parts of the world afflicted by the absence of that ideal.

    Gather round this fire, therefore, oh ye acolytes of the Word. Sing a song and shake a leg. The master storyteller has levitated to the skies. Gabriel is back at Heavensgate. Banana leaves are clapping in the fields of Aracataca. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is laughing, his patented moustache lush and green like the forests of his beloved Colombia.

    • Prof. Osundare writes from New Orleans, United States

  • Boko Haram requires decisive military response

    Boko Haram requires decisive military response

    For all Nigerians, this year’s Easter was foreshadowed by sorrow, gloom and anxiety. A few days before Good Friday, there was a bomb blast at Nyanya Motor Park in our nation’s capital at rush hour. The blast left in its wake, death, injury and massive destruction of properties. The anarchists followed up the bombing in Abuja with other acts of infamy in the North East, the most reprehensible being the abduction of secondary school girls in Chibok, Borno State.

    Our thoughts and prayers go to those affected by these needless acts of savagery. Our thoughts and prayers also go to their families. We stand united in grief with the families of these hapless school girls in their hour of pain, agony and anxiety. We call on their kidnappers to immediately release them unconditionally.

    There is no doubt that our nation is at war. The enemy has clearly and unequivocally served the nation notice of its vile intentions. Therefore, a clear, unambiguous and decisive military response from the government, beyond the imposition of a state of emergency, is urgently required in this circumstance. This is an option we must consider now.

    It is obvious that we are dealing with insurgents and well funded nihilists, who are determined to violently trample upon the secularity of the Nigerian State and destroy the country. A modern, vibrant, progressive, multi-ethnic, multi-religious Nigeria is an anathema to them. Because they are fired by zealotry and extremism, they are not likely to be swayed by overtures of any kind. We must, henceforth, shift from fighting terrorism to fighting insurgency.

    Our emphasis must, therefore, be on winning the hearts and minds of the communities in the immediate theatres of conflict. The full might and strength of our security services must now be deployed to confront this scourge and we expect our security services to rapidly reorient their assets and capabilities to overcome this difficult challenge. And this must be done within the shortest possible time frame with minimal casualties. Let me emphasise that for them to achieve this they require the cooperation of all and sundry.

    The Government must do all it can to immediately identify the sponsors and the source of funds to the terrorists and the insurgents. In this connection, nobody who is implicated, no matter how highly placed, should be treated as a sacred cow.

    On our part as federal legislators, we will continue to co-operate and work with all arms of government and the people to bring this unwarranted assault on our peace and unity to a swift end. We will activate and deploy every possible constitutional legislative instrument in aid of the war against terror. Every concerted effort must be made to bring this reign of terror to a decisive end.

    The breadth and scope of this assault on the Nigerian State makes for somber reading; places of worship have been violated; pupils have been brutally murdered en masse in their dormitories; school girls have been brutalised and kidnapped from their schools; police stations and army barracks have been attacked and incinerated; lives and properties have been destroyed and whole communities uprooted and made refugees in their own country.

    The tragedy is that at a time of grave national emergency like this when every Nigerian should stand in unity and openly rebuke evil, some of our countrymen and women, unfortunately, only see this as an opportunity for partisan politics. Appallingly, rather than condemn in the strongest possible terms, they have resorted to destructive partisan diatribes that can only demoralise our troops and the nation and encourage the insurgents. When a nation is faced with clear and present danger, what is required is a bipartisan approach and a show of support for the government and the security services.

    In other democracies where terrorism has been confronted with substantial success, bipartisan support for the government’s counter insurgency policy and war efforts have proved vital to lasting success. We must recognise these attacks as an egregious assault on the Nigerian way of life and a signal threat to her corporate existence. We must not quibble, nor speak along party lines. We must speak out as Nigerians, and collectively, we must flash a powerful signal against terror. Our instinctive patriotism should be on display and we must rally bipartisan support for the government to confront terror. This was what the Americans and the British did in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 7/7 London Bombings.

    It is dispiriting that at the peak of bombings, abductions and senseless killings by insurgents, rather than stand together as Nigerians, some people are speaking along party lines, scheming and viewing anarchy from the prisms of partisanship. This is condemnable and totally unacceptable. We should not sell the truth to serve the hour. And the truth is that Boko Haram has declared war, not just on the present government, but on any government founded on the principles of democracy, secularity and tolerance.

    I do not by any means seek to discourage debate, nor do I abhor constructive criticisms. But the print and electronic media are daily inundated with criticisms so destructive that, at times, one is left to wonder whether the insurgents are now the heroes while those fighting them are the villains. The times do not warrant this kind of devious and divisive politicking. The impression must not be given that anybody who gives his life fighting insurgency has died in vain.

    The time has come for us to stand shoulder to shoulder as we confront this evil. As Nigerians, we must all unite across party lines with the sole aim of fighting and defeating our common enemy. If the enemy of unity, peace and progress prevails, there will be no political parties, except the party of hate, of intolerance, of anarchy, and of backwardness and bigotry and this must not stand. That is not a prospect that I or any other Nigerian would wish our dear country.

    I, therefore, call on every Nigerian to be patriotic, patient, prayerful and hopeful. There is no way a strange and anarchic ideology, not supported by any of the faiths to which we subscribe, will overcome the civilised and collective resolve of Nigerians.

    In spite of all these, I re-emphasise my stand that we should not foreclose the avenue for dialogue as a means of finding a lasting solution to the current acts of terrorism and insurgency.

  • Romancing terrorism … (2)

    Romancing terrorism … (2)

    In recent times, Nigeria has been bedevilled by all sorts of vices and problems so much that when the country is trying to solve one, another one or so many other new problems tumble in. The rapidity and speed with which these problems manifest on a daily, if not on an hourly basis, has become worrisome to the extent that it appears there is a deliberate machination by some people or a group of people to shuffle the country, Nigeria, into history. And then the whole issues of Nigeria, as we now know it, may become “Once upon a time” or in the true sense of it, something akin to the late Chinua Achebe’s most controversial book, ‘There was a country’.

    I am neither a Prophet of doom nor someone who does not believe in the indissolubility of Nigeria. If you ask me, I believe in one Nigeria, a country that is so richly blessed with human and natural resources capable of making the most populous country in black Africa, the envy of the whole world. Our strength lies in our diversity as a nation. However, recent events in the country, especially the ones being stage-managed by our so-called politicians, have tended to erode my confidence in the ability of this country to further carry on as one indivisible entity for too long. In short, it is like saying that the country is now being stretched beyond its elasticity and, when that happens, the possibility of breaking apart becomes very real like the dawn of another day.

    In years past, our worries were about bribery and corruption, nepotism and all that, which were the fulcrum of the January 15, 1966 coup led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and some other middle-level officers in the Army. That coup infuriated young army officers from a section of the country who saw the mass killing of politicians by the coup makers as a ploy to eliminate notable figures from their section of the country to pave the way for domination by another section of the country as represented by the major actors in the January 1966 coup. It was this feeling of despair that eventually crystallised in the July 29, 1966 counter-coup, which invariably set the stage for the 30-month Nigeria Civil War that followed from May 1967 to January 1970.

    From what is happening now, it is as if the war was only meant to settle scores between a particular ethnic cum tribal group and another in the country. This argument is more germane because those vices, that is, bribery, corruption and nepotism, are not only still prevalent in today’s Nigeria, they have been elevated to a higher pedestal as they have now become a state religion which everybody, old and young, now worships. The worshipers are no longer the “10 percenters” as Nzeogwu puts it in his coup broadcast, they have moved far ahead to a thousand percent and even more. If we aggregate the level of stealing, pilfering, forgery, and other fraudulent activities and official corruption that pervade our system today, anybody who still has some dose of patriotism flowing in his blood stream will weep for this country. It is as if the country is on a free-fall to an irretrievable perdition.

    As if the monster of corruption in our body politic is not enough to asphyxiate us from existence, from 1999, particularly since the advent of the current democratic experience, the country has become vulnerable to all manner of crimes and criminalities previously unknown in this part of the world. While endemic corruption has taken over our public and private lives, those who are not opportune to hold public offices, which are now regarded as shortcuts to affluence, have devised various ingenious methods to acquire ill-gotten wealth. Perhaps, to rub salt into our festering wounds, in the last five years, a new sinister dimension has been added to the catalogue of woes confronting the country. These are the current rapacious, debilitating and devastating acts of terrorism which have now become a national cankerworm. Many a commentator on national affairs are quick to lay the blame on the extra-judicial killing of Mohammed Yusuff, the leader of the religious sect now popularly known as Boko Haram, which means “Western education is bad”, and scores of his followers in Maiduguri in July, 2009. Not much has been written about how the sect was nurtured, the leadership structure and all that.

    We have been told that the late Yusuff and his band of ragtag army actually confronted the security agents in Maiduguri in 2009, leading to several deaths. Many properties were also torched, looted or out rightly vandalised. For quite some time, we have been sentimental about the casualties and damages caused by the Boko Haram uprising that has now engulfed a large section of the country. But why will a so-called religious group turn so bloody in the propagation of their so-called religious ideology? As for me, what I see is that beyond this religious shroud is a political undertone which goes beyond fighting Jonathan’s Presidency. What is going on is a well-calculated broad-based agenda to completely take over this country by violence using religion as a veil. In the last few years, I have been talking to people within and outside this country who can see beyond the narrow prism of politics and decipher what is actually going on. One thing to note is that until late last year, no notable figure in the Northern part of the country has ever raised his or her voice to condemn, in its entirety, the brigandage being unleashed on that part of the country even though the rampaging sect had completely destroyed the little they had since 2009. Even then, what the few notable figures have done so far appears too little, too late.

    Today, we talk about the impoverished North. Who are those responsible for this impoverishment of the people? Of course, it is a documented fact that in the 54 years of Nigeria’s independence, elements from the northern part of the country have ruled the country for more than two-thirds of the period under review, leaving a miserable one-third of the period to the rest of the country to grapple with. Go through the records of the Federal Civil Service, you will find out that the list is top heavy with the names of people from a certain part of the country. In the few instances where others hold sway, they are more or less like figureheads as they are ensconced among these powerful people who virtually live on government and government’s patronage all their lives. That is one aspect of our national life, and this attitude is replicated in all aspects of our existence as a nation – a situation where everybody worships at the feet of a powerful few.

    Nothing quite illustrates the existential anomaly in the system more than what Bola Dada, a retired diplomat, unveiled in his recent interview in a national daily where he chronicled his experiences in international affairs as a former diplomat, especially his experience in Sudan. Titled “I was chased out of Sudan when I raised the alarm about Boko Haram”, Dada said, at a point during his stay in Sudan, a former governor of a northern state, now a senator of the Federal Republic, “was in Sudan for two weeks and underwent indoctrination.” He also said the former governor was “exposed to all the training camps of Osama Bin Laden,” who incidentally was Dada’s neighbour. According to Dada, “Osama Bin Laden also had many firms and industries which he only used as a façade because he was actually using those firms as training camps for Al-Qaeda. Among his trainees were many Nigerians from the North. They would leave Nigeria as if they were going to study but were at the training camps of Osama Bin Laden”. He said “the former governor got back to Nigeria and the following day, he declared Sharia. And from then, they were sending students for Jihadist training… As far as I am concerned, Boko Haram is an offshoot of Sharia”.

  • Boko/Fulani/Bank interest Rate/CSR Wars: Matters of Urgent Conference Importance

    Boko/Fulani/Bank interest Rate/CSR Wars: Matters of Urgent Conference Importance

    Nigeria is at war. The second war is the Boko Haram war. ‘Our Girls’, 200+ girls, kidnapped from school, are still ‘missing’ with no encouraging information or ‘Daily News Bulletin’. Instead we hear of new contracts for roads. Over 200 girls and their captors are not too tiny to have left a heat trail to be picked up by the daily satellite surveillance, our spies and our paid informers. No doubt there is an Air force and military ring of steel tightening around the area in the Sambisa Forest by the magnificent Armed Forces of Nigeria who at last have something to prove at home after their ECOMOG victories.

    We salute our brave men under arms and in foxholes, eyes penetrating the darkness of that forest seeking their targets and attempting to free the hostages with minimum or zero casualties. Even one dead girl will be too much for any parent to bear, though Boko Haram has maliciously already executed many girls and children and unborn babies in the Nyanya, Abuja bombing. Certainly Nigeria expects the early release by ‘ANY MEANS NECESSARY‘of ‘Our Girls’ so cruelly kidnapped by Boko Haram. Our whole government and private sector energy as a nation should be targeted towards freeing ‘Our Girls’ As Soon As Possible.

    Meanwhile Nigeria must not forget the daily 10-50 victims of the Fulani herdsmen’s ‘Right of Cow Way’ war and assault on Nigerian farmers across seven states, north and south who on retaliation are labelled as demons. Nobody lies down to die. The Non Sovereign National Conference must address this issue.

    If meat is the cause of war –fast on, turn to fish. Will Nigeria embarking on a three to six month prayer and ‘FAST FROM MEAT’ stop the war? SAY NO TO MEAT.  All wars are financial. Why are Nigerians so insensitive to the rights of others as to demand and actually eat meat brought to their tables at the cost of human lives? Incredible insensitivity! Even one life is one too many for your lunch of meat.  ‘Blood Meat’ brought to our tables by the murder of over 3000 and displacement of millions of farmers and families members is unacceptable and must be rejected. The Fulani-Nigeria must be stopped by a ‘MORATORIUM ON MEAT EATING’ until peace returns. It is small price to pay to instil sanity. We should have enforced this long ago.

    Meanwhile Nigeria is fighting a third war after the Boko Haram and the Fulani –Nigeria War. It is the ‘The Cement War’. Check cement bag prices worldwide. Cement is N2,300 per bag, up from N600 a few years ago, pre-rich man, whereas worldwide the average price is N500. Is this the price we have to pay to host the richest man in Nigeria and Africa and 23rd or 25th richest man in the world among us, excluding Nigerian and African past heads of state who are publicity shy? The price Nigeria is paying is too high. Building prices have shot up. The richest get invited to Davos to pontificate, with corner-mouth, on the imperatives of mass housing and poverty reduction. Excuse me, but ‘cement charity and fair play’ begin at home with the normal, not inflated, cement prices in Nigeria. Just imagine the cost to Nigerians of fuel when the richest man’s Lagos Refinery comes on stream. Has he got the guaranteed petroleum deliveries denied all previous refinery planners since Obasanjo’s feeble or frustrated private refinery initiative?

    There is also a ‘Bank Interest Rate War’ against Nigerians needing loans. The banks first quarter profits, and secret bank bonuses, are as usual obscenely mind-boggling and why not, with interest rates shamefully still at 22-25% except for the chosen few in some economic areas. Four banks have a collective profit in excess of N12b. Cut Interest rates! In normal societies this translates into a Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, fund of 1%+ or N120m. Where is that money? Is it well spent? N120m is twelve N10m youth centres countrywide or 36 in a year. And that does not include the CSR from other banks and 1000 other companies. CSR could be better coordinated than it is.

    Just as we complain to the Non-Sovereign National Conference about poor and over-centralised central government, we must also complain about poor CSR with over-centralisation in the headquarters. Why should head office in Abuja spend all the CSR vote? Every manager should be able to spend money in the locality of the bank, perhaps in proportion to earnings. AGMs and shareholders must monitor and direct CSR activities of their companies and the service companies their company does business with and ‘RECOMMEND THAT COMPANIES AND BANKS IN PARTICULAR ‘DECENTALISE CSR FUNDS’ TO BRANCHES and DISTRIBUTORS. A bank or company with a branch or distributorship in your neighbourhood should be doing serious CSR in your community. CSR is not a joke and should not be given maximally to sports like polo and golf. A lot of CSR is well motivated and well spent. However, in our dysfunctional society without any social security net, CSR is actually life-saving, life-changing and a desperately needed helping hand. Without CSR many NGOs and ‘Homes’ especially those servicing the poor, the orphaned and physically and mentally challenged will die. CSR has the additional burden of providing relief in crisis areas.

    Will the true Nigerians please stand up! Nigeria is so desperately in need of true Nigerians.

  • How not to play politics

    How not to play politics

    In May 2013 when a US state under the control of the Republican Party was hit by deadly tornado, politics of division and exclusiveness was shoved aside by the stakeholders to bring succour to the people who had been bereaved, injured and rendered homeless. Democratic Party President Barack Obama who was far away from the scene promptly ordered massive federal support.

    A president who is often embroiled in a struggle with the Republicans over their disdain for expansive federal agencies, Obama nevertheless went to Oklahoma State under the Republican Governor Mary Fallin, who only the year before described the Obama administration as pursuing “failed policies”.

    She declared: “In Oklahoma, we could teach Washington a lesson or two about fiscal policy and the size and the proper role of government,” adding that the Democrats were having a record of “dysfunction and outrageous spending”.

    But that was all politics, unfit for realistic governance in the face of a situation that required the two politicians to govern and not to play politics at the expense of the welfare of the people. To be sure, they did eventually come together as two statesmen elected not to massage their egos but to submit themselves to service to the people.

    That I think was the point the ex-governor of Abia State Dr Orji Uzor Kalu was making the other day when he called on Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State in Ibadan. Noticing the monumental progress that Oyo State has witnessed under the administration of Ajimobi since his advent in 2011, Kalu warned the politicians in the area not to allow divisive politics to rubbish these great advances.

    He commended Governor Ajimobi’s administration for its developmental strides across the state adding, “I am convinced that you (Ajimobi) have done very well and I give a very high mark. I have been in Ibadan before and I can see the development that has taken place. We have seen a lot of change… If Governor Ajimobi wins (again) in future election, he should be supported.”

    It is clear that what the ex-governor of Abia is preaching has to do with doctrine of how not to play barren politics with governance. But for politics not to be barren and make nonsense of the mandate of the electorate, the interest of the society must be reckoned with. So, if there is a performing government in place as it is with the Ajimobi administration in Kalu’s well considered verdict, all of society in Oyo State should rally around the governor in support and loyalty, regardless of party affiliation.

    Right-thinking Nigerians would find it easy to align with Kalu’s position, since he pins it on the need to “ensure the enthronement of an egalitarian society and ensure development” as he put it when he spoke with Governor Ajimobi. In other words if the citizens of Oyo state truly want a progressive and stable environment the ball is in their court to cooperate with their governor and his administration. They should seek to constitutionally perpetuate a system that is fostering peace, progress and development and refuse to be swayed by ethnicity and divisive politics. Truly, Oyo State has seen breathless changes lately. This development is assuming a spirit that is taking the citizens where they ought to be rather than where the poverty and visionless path of the past was herding them. There is no partisanship in the delivery of the good things of life to the people. It would patently be unpatriotic for politicians to confuse the people about politicking and governance. The former is manipulative, blinding the masses with the idea of government as exclusive political machinery aloof from the people. But the latter is the collective administration of society that seeks the welfare of the people who put the representative government in power.

    We must draw the line and let the people know that real test for a public office holder lies in performance not in his ability to play politics. In Oyo State, the people are recognizing for the first time in more that decade that if you have a disciplined and a forward-looking administration, it can be trusted with the taxpayers money to initiate projects that benefit the larger society and not a few.

    Today the citizens of the state are wondering where the funds came from for the construction of new roads, the rehabilitation of long abandoned water works, the provision of brand new buses for free transportation of workers and student, the cleanup of Ibadan, the prompt payment of workers and retired civil servants’ entitlements etc. The money was always there; it was only waiting for a good husbandman with a disciplined profile.

    • Olaopa is a retired civil servant in Saki, Oyo State.

     

  • Why Governor Shettima was right (II)

    Why Governor Shettima was right (II)

    A little known event occurred in Maiduguri last year which suggests that the allegation against the authorities of the neglect of the welfare, safety and security of staff was probably truer of the army than of the police. This was an incident in which a senior officer reportedly slapped a regimental sergeant major (RSM) for asking too many awkward questions about the welfare of his troops. He again reportedly slapped a junior officer for remonstrating on the RSM’s behalf. The soldiers apparently could not stand this anymore and took matters into their own hands, resulting into the officer being admitted into the National Hospital for weeks.

    Fortunately, the affair did not degenerate into a far more serious breakdown of discipline.

    At the time of the incident the offending officer was shortly due for retirement. It is not certain whether he has since been retired or not. What is certain is that no one was ever court marshalled over the incident as they should have been because in the military one of the worst offenses a soldier can commit is to assault a fellow soldier, no matter the provocation.

    However even more telling about the poor morale of our troops in coping with the Boko Haram insurgency than this incidence and The Guardian’s story of November 21 last year which I referred to last week, was an online media report last April about how both then Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Admiral Ola Sa’ad Ibrahim, and then Chief of Army Staff, Lt.General Azubuike Ihejirika, separately threatened their civilian bosses for what the CDS described as a “pile of mess” he said the civilians had created in recent times in running the affairs of the Ministry of Defence. This was on the day they variously received Alhaji Aliyu Ismaila as then new permanent secretary of the ministry.

    Both military chiefs said they had lost patience with the way the procurement of arms and equipment were being presided over by civilians in the ministry without reference to the relevant service chiefs. Lt-General Ihejirika reportedly added that the Nigerian Army lacked adequate operations vehicles, accommodation, arms and ammunitions, amongst others, because of the existing bureaucratic bottlenecks.

    It is doubtful that those bottlenecks have been removed, given the legendary corruption and snail speed that has characterised our bureaucracy, both civilian and military.

    However, long before Admiral Ibrahim and Lt-Gen Ihejirika read their riot acts to their civilian bosses in April 2012, Ihejirika’s better regarded previous army chief, Lt-General Victor Malu, had complained bitterly in an interview in the Sunday Sun (July 31, 2005) that under him the army never procured even a pin as far as arms and equipment were concerned.

    “We did not,” he said in the interview, “procure anything…I served the army for 22 months as Chief of Army Staff. I did not get a kobo from the government for any project.”

    Malu had been fired in March 2002 for, among other things, his outspokenness against the decision by President Olusegun Obasanjo to embed American military officers and men in our barracks – a decision which was probably unprecedented anywhere in the world – ostensibly to train our troops for peacekeeping.

    Between Malu’s sack in 2002 and the appointment of Ihejirika as army chief, a special investigation panel of the army had, according to the report of the panel published on the Sahara reporters website several years ago, established that there had been a massive theft of arms and ammunition from the army’s armoury in Kaduna at the time one of Malu’s successors as army chief, the late Lt-General Andrew Owoye Azazi, was the General Officer Commanding of the 1st Division headquartered in Kaduna. Those arms and ammunition were reportedly sold to militants in the Niger Delta in a deal allegedly financed by some leading politicians from the region.

    It is doubtful if the gap created by that treasonable arms deal was ever sufficiently plugged in spite of the huge annual budgets for the military since 2006, given the fact alone that, consistent with our national budgets in the last 15 years or so, the ratio of the military’s recurrent expenditure to the capital has been in the region of 70 to 30 per cent.

    It would be grossly unfair and demoralising, even unpatriotic, to accuse our soldiers of not doing their best to end the Boko Haram insurgency when there is only so much a soldier can do in the face of the superior numbers and arms of the enemy, a superiority which is inexplicable in the face of the hundreds of billions of Naira voted annually for our country’s security and territorial integrity. As the late legendary Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, sang in one of his more memorable numbers, “uniform na cloth na tailor de sow am.” In other words, military uniform alone does not make its wearer any more special or superhuman than someone wearing mufti.

    Clearly, Governor Shettima’s frustration at the wanton killings in his state was not with the soldiers as such but with the fact that they appeared helpless to stop or contain the killings because they lacked sufficient arms and equipment and enough motivation to do so even though trillions of Naira have been spent in the fight against Boko Haram terror.

    Nothing better illustrates the lack of correlation between the huge spending on the military and its effectiveness than the fact that the immediate past army chief whose over three-year extended tenure was unprecedented, spent a lot more in building the most modern, expensive and expansive army barracks in the country for an arm of its language school which he hived off from its headquarters in Ilorin, Kwara State, to his native village of Ovim, Isuikwuato Local Government Area in Abia State, than he did in procuring arms and equipment for his troops fighting Boko Haram. In the process of building the barracks which is big enough to accommodate a battalion, he built himself one of the most grandiose country homes – one shocked colleague of his reportedly described it as “madness” – by any public officer anywhere in the country.

    It is also noteworthy that he wilfully abandoned the expansion of the country’s premier military hospital in Kaduna started by his predecessor, Lt-General Lawal Dambazau, which would’ve transformed it into a world class hospital for the treatment of our troops wounded in battles at home and abroad.

    Not least of all, it was under the erstwhile service chiefs that the military changed its policy of using relatively modest locally assembled Peugeot 407 saloons as official vehicles for its very senior officers to the use of imported top of the line BMWs and Toyota and Range Rover jeeps. The symbolism of such immodesty among senior army officers for the troops’ morale could hardly have been lost on its rank and file.

    In his assessment of the military operation against Boko Haram in The Guardian of London on January 3, 2013, Gwynne Dyer, the well regarded London-based independent journalist, said our military has been “corrupt, incompetent and brutal” in its conduct as a result of which, he said, the military had turned itself into Boko Haram’s “best recruiting sergeants”.

    You do not have to share this view to agree with him that in spite of the existence of some honest men and women among our civilian and military leaders, as a group, they have been “spectacularly cynical and self-serving” in their handling of their public trusts.

    In taking over the Ministry of Defence from Mr Labaran Maku as the supervising minister, its new boss, Lt-General Aliyu Mohammed, himself a former army chief and the longest serving intelligence czar in the country, said he will do his best to return the country to its more secure and stable past. “With the help of the Almighty Allah and our collective resolve and determination,” he said, “we will get to the destination that will give Nigerians the confidence that the country is a safe place for everyone.”

    Those cautious remarks, in sharp contrast to the past bombast of some of the erstwhile military chiefs, show his appreciation of the fact that relying on force alone, as has largely been the case so far, will never work.

    However, even the more judicious mix of sticks and carrots the minister’s caution suggests, will work only if it is accompanied by a determination of the new defence minister to end the cynicism and self-aggrandisement that has so far characterised our war against Boko Haram, and for that matter, against all other forms of terrorism, criminality and venality in the country.

    More specifically, his hope will only be realised if the military refrains from its past scorched earth response to Boko Haram attacks which has all too often resulted in more innocent civilians being killed than Boko Haram terrorists.

    Hopefully, President Jonathan will have a rethink of his view of Shettima’s lamentation and give his new defence minister all the support he needs to change the popular perception that the war on Boko Haram has been determined more by politics than by any concern for public safety and for the unity and territorial integrity of the country.

    On his part, the new army chief should know that if, along with the National Security Adviser to the president, Colonel Sambo Dasuki, a scion of the Sokoto Caliphate, he cannot solve the, admittedly complex, riddle of Boko Haram which has done so much damage to Nigeria generally but more specifically to the North and to Muslims and to the image of their religion, then the Muslim North will have no one else to blame but its leaders, both secular and religious.

     

     

  • Romancing terrorism (1)

    Romancing terrorism (1)

    The dust raised by last week’s early morning bombing of the bustling Nyayan motor park located on the outskirts of Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital city and seat of government, is yet to settle down. Surprisingly, as if to really demonstrate that they are actually in charge, after the blast in Abuja, the terrorist moved to Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State and swooped on the students writing the ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examination, WASSCE. There, they abducted about 129 girls. According to reports, the operation lasted for more than six hours – from 9pm till about 3am – without any challenge coming from the security agencies. The whereabouts of majority of the girls is still shrouded in mystery.

    With the recent developments, it is pertinent to reappraise the whole campaign against terror in Nigeria. The Boko Haram episode may have escalated in 2009 but the truth is that the whole thing was planned by Nigerians for a long time before the bloody skirmishes that eventually unfolded in 2009. Many of the foot soldiers and their commanders had received extensive training in some West African countries as well as some Middle East countries before that bloody encounter.

    Some years ago, the Chief of Defence Staff of Niger Republic had intimated the Defence Headquaters in Nigeria that they arrested about 600 Nigerians who were in their custody in Niger Republic. They were allegedly sniffed out of their training camps in Niger Republic. Regrettably, the Nigerian authorities did not follow up this piece of information, and when Niamey could no longer cope, she merely allowed the people to go their own way. At about the same time, in the wake of the overthrow of Muamar Gaddafi, the Chief of Defence Staff of Mali also inundated the Defence Headquarters in Nigeria that a whole brigade of Libyan fighters had taken over Northern Mali and cried out for help from Nigeria to confront them and chase them away. Again, the Nigerian authorities, as usual, turned a deaf ear.

    It was at this point that the French government was contacted and subsequently, French troops stepped in and rained bombs on them in the hills of northern Mali. By the time they were dislodged from Mali, they left Mali and settled in Sambissa Forest, from where they recruited a good number of fighters in the northeast of the country to wage war on Nigeria. Though they are using Nigerians as foot soldiers, most of their commanders are not Nigerians. Majority of them are Libyans, which account for the speculation in military circles that some of the dead bodies found at Sambissa forest after each military encounter, were more like bodies of people of Arab descent and other non-Nigerians. Besides, the Libyans and others of Arab descent now pillaging the country, many Nigerians have also visited such countries as Iran, South Yemen, Iraq and others for terrorists’ training. They usually go there under the pretence that they were going to study.

    Unfortunately, our intelligence network in this country is at best comatose. The Department of State Security that has statutory responsibility of carrying out internal surveillance and intelligence gathering seems not to be doing much. Instead, its lean manpower resources are being dissipated as VIP escorts for politicians rather than concentrating on their primary duties. It is sad to note that up till date, no single person has been fingered as one of the sponsors of these terrorists’ acts in the country. You only see the security agencies running after the inconsequential foot soldiers while the big guns are moving freely. I believe that the reason for this lackadaisical attitude is that somebody or some people somewhere don’t want to offend anybody and, therefore, are more inclined to cover up rather than expose those behind these devilish perpetrations.

    The other day during the Anambra State election, I saw SSS operatives with buses marked DSS and uniforms. I challenged anybody to tell me that he or she has ever seen any bus or operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, going about in buses marked CIA or in uniform with CIA boldly written on the shirt or T-shirt. Today in Nigeria, every Tom, Dick and Harry, particularly politicians and even fraudsters have SSS escorts assigned to them. At the Nigeria Intelligence Agency, NIA, the story is worse. That agency is as dead as dodo.

    At the onset of the Boko Haram insurgency, the SSS members who were sent to spy on the sect members soon became more Boko Haram than the sect members they were detailed to spy on. Today, you have virtually all members of the security agencies – Military, Police, SSS, Customs, Immigration, Prison officers and others – who are active members of Boko Haram. That is why the ongoing war may be difficult to win. At present, the army is seriously overstretched in maintaining internal security. It has less than 88,000 men, the navy 12,000, the Air force about 11,000 while the police has 350,000 men or thereabout in its nominal roll. Since the incumbent Inspector General of Police withdrew policemen from checkpoints, what have they been doing to fight crime and criminality?

    The only way out of the present quagmire is to go back to the drawing board and like this column has always advocated, let us close our borders with Niger, Chad and Cameroun. These terrorists are domiciled in Northern Cameroun, which is far from Douala, the capital. That is why the Camerounian authorities are less perturbed. All these countries mentioned have fallen to the intimidation of these terrorists who may have simply told them: “If you don’t allow us to operate in your territory, we would turn our guns against you.” That is why all these countries that share boarders with us are not raising a finger against the terrorists. They are comfortable as far as the heat is not on them.

    I believe the best way to regain total control of Nigeria’s territory is for the military to embark on a grand assault of the hills and forests in the North-east. They could do what the United States did to Osama Bin Laden at Tora Bora in Afghanistan. They should engage in indiscriminate bombing of the hills and forests even if it means dropping napalm bombs ceaselessly for about a week. That was what the US did in Afghanistan and Bin Laden was forced to take to his heels when the caves where he had taken cover came crashing under the crushing weight of the devastating bombs. He fled to neighbouring Pakistan and finally pitched his tent at Abbotabad where the US Marines finally dealt him a deadly blow. So, the Nigeria Air Force must take up that role. If the terrorists are hiding inside the caves in the hills, they will collapse in the face of intense carpet bombing.

    Above all, there must be a joint information room for all the services so as to be able to properly coordinate this anti-terror campaign. The situation where the security agencies do not share information is bad enough. Even where, may be, the military gives information to the SSS, the service goes and takes the credit. As for the police, they are not known for sharing information with any sister agency no matter what.

    The other day, Alex Badeh, the new Chief of Defence Staff, said the role of the military is to confront the terrorists while the civilian authorities will do the politically-needful. He is right. Now, what is the role of emirs, politicians and elders in this fight? A closer look at the tactics of these Boko Haram terrorists shows clearly that they rely more on people drawn from the lowest cadre of the social ladder to fight their war. These are shoe shiners, mairuwa (water vendors), and other artisans. Remember that they used a firewood truck in the bombing in Maiduguri sometimes ago. The fact remains that the security agencies have as much information as possible at their disposal, what is left is the ability to piece them together and do the needful. May God help us; help Nigeria!

    • To be continued

     

  • Happy Easter?; Oil price increase; Do LGAs have a future?; ‘ONLY 129 girls’

    Happy Easter?; Oil price increase; Do LGAs have a future?; ‘ONLY 129 girls’

    The murder of security personnel and the kidnap of 129 students with 49 found and the Nyanya, Abuja bombing claiming 75 lives with hundreds injured terrorise us all just as political violence terrorises us. The ‘heat signal’ generated by vehicles carrying maybe 3-400 people must show on foreign satellites. When will that convergence of information from international satellites on the Sambisa Forest lead to recovery of the terrorised girls? If you were not a distraught parent, you should have shared their pain with prayers and donations. Just perhaps you had a ‘Happy Easter’ even without electricity and you spent four or 10 hours longer on the road.

    Nigerian political authorities have traditionally misspent/stolen the budget before elections. This 2014 budget should not be diverted to political war chests for 2015. With the budget passed, government must give Nigerians 130,000+Mw, the East-West Road, the Second Niger Bridge and the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, start the Solar Revolution and fund textbooks and novels in all school. These ‘Matters Of Urgent National Importance’ do not need Economic Summits. They are not nuclear physics, but political ABCs, achievable by a forceful visionary leadership with a sense of history. Power is not the power of corruption bank accounts but the power to participate for positive change and persuade others likewise.

    Nigerians need to use information better. The price of oil is $104. The budget oil benchmark is $77 or so. This nearly $30 difference and unbudgeted gain for 2.5million barrels day, 22% in billions of extra naira earned. We must prevent that 22% disappearing into the Excess Crude Account or follow the missing $20billion or the First and Second Gulf Oil windfalls. The money must accelerate development.

    Nigeria has job opportunities that should have been created long ago. But now, even education leads to unemployment. The government in the past and present has misused Local Government Areas (LGAs) which should have had a ‘stay and work at home’ development policy. But no one created the developmental and conducive environment at LGA level. Most LGAs are rundown by gangster governments. Who wants to work in an LGA without good without good facilities and staff?

    In any other country, the terrors of our time would require a cross party solution since politics and the poor decisions of the political class are causes of LGA, state and federal problems and the solutions. But here ‘we blame passing strangers for our body odour and dirty underwear’ fulfilling the well-worn African proverb of ‘pointing one accusing finger at others while four fingers point back at us’. The calculated destruction or non-construction of the LGA level is caused by local, state and federal machinations. Most LGAs were never developmental, but just another level of corruption, political financing with voter manipulation and punishment-or-reward for foe or friend, with no serious service. Initially LGA councils notoriously meet only monthly on allocation day to share funds among the traditional rulers, bigwigs and hangers-on. Indeed it was this coupled with theft of salaries for teachers that helped ruin education. This corruption forced the transfer of LGA budgets to the states to guarantee salaries and LGAs were run by the occupying state political party. Even indigenes refused to spend allocated funds on schools, education and health preferring to steal everything. Only few states are genuinely interested in the citizens or want to protect their political flank. Many LGA staff have questionable credentials and motives with no ‘service to others before self’ attitude and often leave LGAs worse off.

    The value of LGAs versus their cost and consequences needs reassessment. The power of the LGAs is too absolute with thugs as enforcers. LGAs must have non-political citizens in LGA Council Committees. ICPC and EFCC should be preventive ‘Early warning’ at LGA council meetings to help stop corruption, stupid LGA taxation, levies and political mayhem. Our Non-Sovereign National Conference should ask why there were 77 in old Kano before Jigawa was split off and now 44 LGAs in Kano and only 20 in Lagos. Is the discriminatory fiat of maximum military might and ethnic arrogance not correctable by this NSNC? Perhaps we should cancel LGAs funding from federal entirely and have states do so as most of them already manage to corner the LGA budgets through one subterfuge or the other –from co-signatories to accounts to stalled LGA election schedules. The questions are –would states run better under the governor? Of course Governor ‘He or she’ may deprive LGAs which did not vote for ‘him or her’ but that is the political game worldwide. Politics must be played fairly with justice to all. If LGAs had carried their weight even with the funds available to them over the last 50 years, there is no reason why any citizen would need to travel for greener pastures. Can the failed LGA system be fixed, rendered accountable and of ‘Service with a Smile’? We are all in an LGA. Has an LGA Chairman or official ever once written or sent a message to congratulate anyone you know or their parents for ‘Exemplary Service to the LGA’? Of course not! Only demand notices!

    Whenever there is a dispute over tragedy numbers, even ‘one’ victim should never be addressed as ‘only one’. Government agencies must never use ‘ONLY’ for the number of dead. For the families that ‘only one’ death is 100% loss.

  • Nyanya bomblast and the fight against terrorism in nigeria

    Nyanya bomblast and the fight against terrorism in nigeria

    Sinister terror and hatred have again reached from the shadows to steal the lives of innocent Nigerians.  In Nyanya, seventy-two people were killed by a car bomb. Hundreds more were injured in the devastation.  Their killings served no purpose except for those who exalt in evil. The bomb blast quickly came and went like the deadly thief it was; but we shall be left to endure the pain and loss from this terrible act for a long time to come.

    What the nation lost is irreplaceable.  The number 72 seems like just another grim tally among the death statistics that have become all too common.  But what occurred is much more than that. We must really stop and take notice of where evil is attempting to drive us to. The abduction of over one hundred school girls is unacceptable, condemnable and saddens me greatly.

    We cannot allow these merchants of death to make us numb to the tragedy they manufacture.  Those who were killed were not merely numbers on a page. They were human beings, made of flesh and blood body and soul like all the rest of us. They were someone’s father or mother, brother or sister. They had parents; they were someone’s child. They were husbands or wives, neighboring friends and colleague. They had dreams and hopes. They were loved and loved others in return. Now, life has been taken away and those who cared from them must bear a grief no person should be asked to carry.

    These people committed no wrong. Their only crime was to be ordinary working class people seeking to eke out a livelihood and tend for themselves and their families. For this, they were killed.

    They represent the backbone of the working people. Not many of them lived an easy life. Most worked hard and long for modest wages. They lifted themselves up every morning to earn their daily bread. They faced the many social and economic challenges and obstacles our society poses, yet they worked not to destroy but to make this a better place by bettering the lives of their family and loved ones.

    These people lived anonymously and died the same way. We do not yet know their names. But, in a fundamental sense, we know who they were. They were part of us. They shared the same aspirations we all do. We seek an improved fate for our children and hope to leave them a better life. We want to work and live in dignity and respect.  We want a life of peace and harmony with our neighbors regardless of religion, ethnicity or background. We seek prosperity not poverty. We seek brotherly understanding not strife. We seek peace, not bombs.

    It was not just 72 people who were taken in this depraved assault.  Each of us lost something that day. Yet, despite the loss and suffering, we must not cower in fear, and let the purveyors of death believe they have scored a victory over us.

    Those who committed this act have declared war on all that is decent and good. They have declared war not against the state or even the government. They have declared war on Nigeria and all Nigerians because this murder took men and women, old and young, Christian and Muslim alike. In trying to scare, frighten and divide us, the evildoers committed injury to their own cause. For they have shown us that we all suffer inhumanity in the same way.

    No matter our religion or place of birth, we all bleed and are wounded the same way by injustice. Decency runs through the teachings of each religion and ethnic group that comprise the people of Nigeria.

    We may have our differences, but the vast majority of Nigerians stand united against the appalling violence committed in Nyanya and other places.

    These acts have no place in Nigeria. Those who commit them have no place in our country.  The perpetrators may look like human beings. They may have limbs and faces like the rest of us but they are not like us. In killing innocent people, they have become inhuman. They live outside the scope of humanity. Their mother is carnage and their father is cruelty. They have declared war against the people of Nigeria. They have shown that they do not want to liberate the people. They want to kill them. Yet, with all the energy of their evil and ignorant hatred, they shall fail. The good people of Nigeria shall triumph.

    Such a wicked mission shall not succeed. We have gone too far in our journey to nationhood and endured too much to allow these terrible acts to divert us.

    Not only have these agents of death killed innocent people, they also abducted over 100 young women from their school. Why abduct school girls? Whatever they plan, they should be ready to face the wrath of Nigerian people. They should release these young girls unharmed. Anything else would be an abominable crime.

    We all must take close heed at this moment and recognize the severity of what is upon us. A small minority seeks to bring the nation to its knees through terror. Thus, we must stand tall and united. We can ill afford to allow their crimes to go unpublished united.

    I call on the government to improve and redefine its strategy in the light of this expanding menace.  Clearly, its intelligence gathering needs to be improved so that it can break terrorist plots before they hatch.  Moreover, it needs to enact greater social and economic reform in the blighted areas of the nation to win the hearts and minds of the people.  Give the youth a viable alternative and they will not be duped by the lure of extremist dogma. A major initiative with immediate and long-term strategies for mass employment should be introduced right away.

    Nigeria must and will overcome this scourge but it cannot do so merely by wishful thinking. We need wise and decisive strategy.

    As for me and my party, we deplore and condemn these and all such attacks. Those who commit them must know that the nation stands four square against them.

    While we are engaged in tight political competition against the ruling party, we shall not play politics on this issue so vital to our national survival and wellbeing.

    We pledge ourselves to the unity and safety of this nation and shall do nothing to undermine national security.  We seek no political advantage from this calamity and wish the present administration success in fighting it.

    We stand ready to help in any meaningful and productive way to fight this battle against evil.  We extend our hand and earnest offer of cooperation in this regard.

    Nigeria and Nigerians have suffered enough. Those who now lead the nation and those who would lead her must overlook political differences to find whatever ways we can cooperate to make this a safer, more secure nation for all.

    Thank you and May God Bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

    Kaduna, April 20th, 2014

     

  • 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.