The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

NESG : Primary School Old Students Ass & Dev Board, Library Box, ‘CATFLE’, Enquiring Mind

Letter for a noose… and you be thrown into a river than to harm’.. steal or misappropriate children’s education funds’. The 2014 Nigerian Economic Summit on education is over. Congratulations, particularly for children’s views. It covered all education bases from pre-school, post-graduate, policies, many regulatory bodies, corruption, cost, envelopes, five year curriculum change delays, strategies, teacher quality and qualifications, teacher/student motivation and public private partnerships. Were co-curricular activites discussed -volunteering, debating and athletics – moulding character, relationships, and teaching winning and losing coping skills?

It was brilliant of NESG to have Channels TV. While we welcome policy/financial intervention of international bodies, such funds must not replace funds stolen or unapplied by Abacha etc. Nigerian states are well-funded but traditionally accord education low priority or a greedy leadership steals education money. This is a political crime against education rights of children. States must be honest, have bigger education budgets, not by throwing more DFID, Ford or Bill Gates Funds at the corrupt states to replace the stolen funds, soon to be stolen again.

The summit also highlighted the private sector which is the smaller Old Students Associations, OSA, and Parent Teachers Associations, PTAs and the larger real private sector. Often old students help direct Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, funds to schools. Without Old Students Associations many schools would have collapsed. Imagine the state of Nigeria’s secondary/tertiary education without Old Students Associations and corporate bodies. Strangely, OSAs/Alumni and even PTAs are absent in primary schools except when an old student dies and the playground becomes a funeral ground. Yet pre-school and primary school are the most important foundation layers in education. This fault has cost Nigeria a generation of education success. Almost every Nigerian went to a primary school, a 100+million huge database for billions in funds, ideas, motivation and role models for development.

Government policy must encourage OLD PRIMARY SCHOOL ASSOCIATIONS, OPSA, or Primary Old School Associations, POSA, now! Imagine starting in 2014 over 80,000 new OPSA education bodies gathering funds for individual schools. WOW! Start one in your primary school!

Each Nigerian school must distribute ‘A SCHOOL NEEDS LIST’ and set up a ‘LOCAL COMMUNITY SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT BOARD’ to raise needed funds. Paradoxically, schools still suffer from government political policies that discouraged local fundraising/donations as they could be misused by the political opposition. Wrong! This policy has caused stagnation of education and turned teachers into zombies. Requesting donations by parents and neighbourhood businesses of newspapers/magazines/books are the cornerstone of foreign schools, filling an empty library box weekly and items should be requested for and accepted. Worldwide even private institutions like Oxbridge, Harvard ‘beg’ for funds and donations, so why not public schools? Nigeria must stop politics ruining education. Let children ask parents to send them to school with something -a book, ball, scissors, paper, pictures, marker-pens etc.. Also, you send a book to your old school. Our children are ignorant because they attend unfriendly empty schools-no library book/sport culture – a deliberate backward policy of governments which introduced the ‘theory of’ chemistry and other sciences so that the budget of chemicals/laboratories could be misappropriated for 40 years! No wonder Nigerian graduates know no practical steps- na so-so-theory. Even technical schools have little technical equipment!

Shamefully there is a 6-10,000,000 ‘LIBRARY BOOK DEFICIT’ in Nigeria’s schools. The State of Osun uses computers to substitute for 100 books. Is this visionary high-tech project nationally practical or will ethnic rivalries refuse to fund progressive policies? Were strategies to eliminate this ‘Library Book Deficit’ discussed? Are library books even in Nigeria’s budgets? Librarians rightly want buildings or rooms but governments must immediately install a national/state/LGA emergency strategy of ‘ANNUAL LIBRARY BOXES’ of 100-200books/school-one per year cumulatively creating a library of 1000 books over five years. Parents can equip schools immediately under a ‘BRING A LIBRARY BOOK TO SCHOOL, PLEASE’ asking students to come with a novel for the class or school library at the beginning of each term or year. Each student can take the book back at term-end or lend it in a ‘HOLIDAY BOOK EXCHANGE PROGRAMME’. The following term they each bring another book.

Introduce this ‘IRISH LITERATURE TRICK’ used in St Gregory’s College in the 1960s. Instead of purchasing 30 copies of one literature book X for a class of 30/term or year, we got six copies of five different books, A,D,C,D,E,F a title for each row of six students. At term-end all five books would have been enjoyably read for two weeks each by all students for the price of one. In three years, Classes 1-3, we read five books x three terms x three years = 45 books. Reading problems today are cheaply and easily solvable –variety and enjoyment –not just one literature title for which a bribe may have been paid.

Education is not nuclear physics but simply ‘ABCDEFT’- ‘About Books, Chairs, Desks Equipment, Friendly and Toilets’, and a ‘Child And Teacher-Friendly Learning Environment’- CATFLE. Why are public schools lacking these in 2014? Political and civil service greed – stealing from our children! Will we eat our children next? We have two education problems, creating and filling ‘Enquiring Minds’ in Nigeria’s students! These are hallmarks of civilised society achievable only with astute political leadership and personal sacrifice, the type our parents made for us! No Nigerian official or education policy should discriminate against any Nigerian child. Regular readers will see that these education solutions outlined above have been in this column for years. Any takers this time?

March 26, 2014
Immigration: Comedy in a time of tragedy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 23, 2014
Jonathan and his ‘sponsored’ troubles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 23, 2014
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.

March 19, 2014
Death daily! NESG Summit- Books,& ‘WOW’ factors: Dangote Aquarium, Glo Science Museum!

Why is there such a high and lethal cost to being a Nigerian? Amidst deaths of seven applicants to the immigration service, 114 murdered by ‘suspected’ Fulani herdsmen in Kaduna State and the Lagos boat mishaps, the Nigerian Economic Summit Group has soul-searching questions. The NESG Summit on education which means ‘eliminating ignorance’ may not know that an NESG member MTN has an ‘MTN Science Centre’ in South Africa. Please Google it. There is no MTN Science Centre in Nigeria. What is advertising, what is CSR? Why do NESG members neglect long-term internationally accepted permanent educational thematic structures either as advert strategies or CSR education policies? MUSON, built by NESG members, serves arts education but the sciences are in a deadly vacuum. NESG members prefer short-term use- abuse-and-throw-away bonanza, ‘T-shirt and face cap reality TV/music/sports’. Billions are wasted on promotional pamphlets thrown away as programmes end. Foreign ‘Weapons of Mass Development’ created permanent Exhibitions/Museums supported by corporates sometimes on land donated by intelligent ‘legacy governments’. Where is Lagos Aquarium or Abuja or Port Harcourt Science Museum?

MUSON is a template for NESG to reproduce 500 MUSONs for different themes nationwide on government/private land, bringing the contents of every tertiary institution, department, industry and idea into education, generating new employment and tourism sectors. Abroad, Smithsonian, Welcome, Louvre, Natural History, Science/Tech or Space Exhibitions inspire and educate youth. But ‘Nothing For You’ Nigeria’s youth, Lagbaja says.

We waste education opportunities. Even our Gardens and Parks, GAP, are empty of intellectual profit and should have a corporate-supported permanent unique exhibition or museum to fill the ‘GAP’ in the youth brain. Is there a Cadbury or Milo Chocolate or Indomie Food Museum, a Dangote Cement or Lafarge Building Technology Museum? No!

Where do Nigerian students go for the ‘WOW’ factor? Dangote or Glo Aquarium, Glo Technology Museum, UCH Medical Museum? Not yet built! Why does corporate Nigeria refuse the challenge of grand education designs in iconic buildings? Nigeria deserve better than fine bank buildings. We have 700 km of ocean but no aquarium-the simplest ‘wow’ factor. Have you seen a giant octopus swim? Where are Nigeria’s Dangote, Otedola, Conoil, Glo, MTN, PZ, UAC, Lever Brothers Natural History Museum, First Bank Aquarium, Zenith Zoo,etc? Na so so Event Centre! Greed go kill us! Unfortunately the NESG members and politicians know the value of pictures as they litter Nigeria with millions of posters and the biggest advert posters and structures in the world but paradoxically allow our youth to die in ignorance with no classroom posters. NESG members need education on better use of CSR powerful pocket money!

Education is four quarters – primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary- making a circle of intelligence. Quaternary education is out-of-school, co-curricular. Education remains mainly under-funding and corruption. Yes, NESG members support many educational infrastructural, scholarships, academic, sports and cultural and now entrepreneurship activities, under CSR and continuing education programmes including co-curricular sports and targeted ‘Subject Excellence Projects’ like in mathematics, chemistry etc. But more is spent on corporate adverts than on education in Nigeria. NESG members need CSR coordination.

Education is not rocket science. Little cheap/per student things make a difference like desks, chairs, books, posters, IT, learning aids, toilets, water, electricity, library, laboratories, good learning environment, black or white board, chalk-white and coloured- and marker pens, Braille stylus for the blind. Tick these to assess schools. Teachers are not always included in solutions. No public school can buy a book or scissors due to over-centralisation. The disaster that is education can be summarised as ‘A picture is worth a 1000 words except in Nigeria where there are no posters, libraries, museums, exhibitions or aids’. Tony Blair’s ‘Education, Education, Education’ was UK’s key to the future. In Nigeria, ‘books, books, books’ are essential! A school without books is not a school. I offer this outline Manifesto/ Communiqué.

To accelerate quality education, NESG will:

Encourage Federal/state/LGAs to spend 26% on education- UNESCO.

Encourage access to counterpart N102billion in UBEC/ TET Funds with no diversion of education budgets

Warn that funding of political parties must not come from government or education budgets

Encourage CSR funding of books -text and novels to improve the reading culture, not empty exercise books.

Sign up for ‘A CSR 200 book BOX Library Project/school’ and

Support ‘A PICTURE IS WORTH 1000 WORDS’ 10 SCHOOL POSTERS/class on different subjects. Some Corporate Calendars are educational but never reach classrooms

Encourage one percent of Pre Tax profits as ‘The CSR Gold Standard’ with a higher percent for education

Encourage NESG members CSR Awards after ‘CSR Monitoring, Voluntary Registration, Evaluation’

Encourage a wide CSR sign-on to include service companies, legal, accounts, property and advertising firms.

Empower teachers with ‘Teacher Packs’ and re-training course content

Every student contributes to NESG corporate wealth by eating, drinking, washing, phoning, taking transport so encourage decentralised CSR and Foundations to branches/bank outlet/distributors to reach every school.

Girls deserve extra educational support from cosmetic/sanitary companies like PZ, Procter and Gamble etc.

NESG should fund first generation youth volunteer NGOs – Boy Scouts, Girl Guides. Red Cross as role models.

Encourage CSR in Education PPPs Public Private Partnerships with Recognitions, Rewards and Awards.

Commit members to some CSR for permanent Exhibitions/Museums especially if government donates land.

Every corporate advert should morally include a small add-on educational/health message to keep citizens alive.

March 19, 2014
An avoidable friction

A few weeks ago, precisely on Wednesday, March 5, under the headline: “Wanted: A war cabinet,” this column wrote: “ …The only way out of this quagmire in which the country has been enmeshed all this while is the urgent need for the President to form a war cabinet… A senior cabinet minister must coordinate the ‘war’. As things are now, it may be impossible for the National Security Adviser, NSA, the only person who probably performs the role of coordinating the military interventions in the North-east, to summon any of the head of the services to a meeting – I mean summoning someone like the Chief of Army Staff or the Chief of Air Staff that are both involved in managing the crisis to a meeting – not to talk of the Chief of Defence Staff. They will just ignore him because the NSA is more or less a Staff Officer to the President. That is why there is the need to quickly put a war cabinet in place.”

This story was featured the very day new ministers were sworn in at the Federal Executive Council meeting in Abuja. And of course, among the new ministers was Lieutenant-General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau (retd), who was designated as Defence Minister. Gusau came in to occupy that position which had remained vacant for some time while the insurgency in the northeast of the country rages like harmattan wild fire. A week before, the Boko Haram terrorists had added a bestial dimension to the orgy of bloodletting and brigandage which they have unleashed on innocent Nigerians by massacring sleeping school children at the Federal Government College in Buni Yadi, Yobe State.

Not only that. The terrorists literarily went on a killing-spree in the three Nigeria’s north-east states of Yobe, Adamawa and Borno that have been under a state of emergency since May 16, 2013. Apart from the attack on FGC, Buni Yadi, where no fewer than 43 students were killed, they moved to Shuwa, in Magadali Local Government Area of Adamawa state, where a Teachers’ College, a secondary school and a Catholic Covenant were attacked. Next, it was the turn of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, and epicentre of the terrorists’ attacks, where a twin-bomb explosion tore through the heart of the city, killing more than 50 people. Other adjoining villages, including Mainok, a village about 50 kilometres from Maiduguri, were not spared. More attacks had followed. It was the spate and ferocity of these attacks, which the terrorists carried out with ease as they moved in and out of hamlets unchallenged, leaving sorrow, tears and blood in their trail, that prompted the call for the formation of a war cabinet to help the government in the successful prosecution of the ‘war’ and bring an end to it with limited casualties.

Since the publication of the column coincided with the appointment of Gusau as Defence Minister, my thinking was that the government will take a cue from the unsolicited advise the column gave to put things in the right perspective in order to checkmate the festering act of terrorism in that part of the country. But events last week, which allegedly infuriated Gusau, the Defence Minister, did not only confirm my fears about the absence of a centralised and coordinated command and control of the ongoing counter-terrorism operation in the North-east, it has also exposed the lack of appropriate synergy in the whole operation. This is probably why the terrorists appear to be invisible to some extent as they kept on having a semblance of upper hand over the Nigerian security forces that appear to be outgunned, outmanned and overwhelmed.

The incident of last week also coincided with the day the terrorists had the audacity to mount an attack on Giwa Amu Barracks, a strategic military outpost in Maiduguri. Though the early morning attack proved costly and fatal for the terrorists, it is indeed a sign of the times. Reports have it that a Shilka Tank, a military artillery weapon that was strategically stationed to ward off attacks on the barracks, actually failed to fire when the terrorists attempted to swoop on the barracks ostensibly to pave way for the release of their comrades-in-crime numbering well over 250, who were detained at the military formation. The soldiers were said to have fallen back on other weapons to defend the barracks and subsequently repelled the invaders.

Though they were successfully driven back, the terrorists were said to have torched the MRS, the traditional medical facility within the barracks as well as the detention facility but no detainees were freed. The detention facility is believed to be holding some highly placed terrorists’ commanders and therefore, their colleagues will prefer them dead than volunteer useful information to the security agents. Besides, the terrorists’ camp is said to have been seriously depleted by recent military onslaughts on their hideouts and so, they are badly in need of replenishment to boost their dwindling fighting capabilities.

The temerity of the terrorists may have been halted for now, but the recent embarrassment suffered by Gusau so soon after assuming duty as well as the unrelenting terrorists’ campaign in the North-east has again brought into focus the call for the formation of a “war cabinet” to tackle the menace of these terrorists. There must be someone to bring everybody together. The present hierarchical arrangement, in which all the service chiefs have access to the President, is not helping matters. It must be properly structured. It is a good thing that Alex Badeh, an Air Marshal and Chief of Defence Staff, CDS, has quickly made up with Gusau, but the integral roles of the CDS and the service chiefs must be clearly defined to avoid any friction in the future. The Service Chiefs must be responsible to the CDS, while the CDS in turn is responsible to the Defence Minister; and the Defence Minister will then interface with the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

Unfortunately, what has hitherto been in place is a wrong system whereby the Defence Minister was more or less sidelined in the scheme of things. Also, what had been in place is a figure-head CDS, who was supposed to coordinate the services on paper but nobody reports to him as even the President could summon any of the service chiefs without recourse to the CDS. This is wrong. For instance, the CDS does not know the budget of the defence. The common practice is that individual services – Army, Navy, Air Force – prepares their budgets and go ahead to the National Assembly to defend same without any iota of involvement by the CDS. The proper thing to do is that the CDS should present the budget and then go to the National Assembly to defend it. In other words, the CDS should coordinate the activities of the services and serve as a link between with the Defence Minister.

Furthermore, we could achieve a better result if the Defence Headquarters, DHQ, is merged with the Ministry of Defence, with a mixture of soldiers and civilians working together instead of the present situation where only civilians sit in the Defence Ministry and award all manners of contracts which are not even required by the DHQ. I have no doubt whatsoever that the present Defence Minister parades excellent credentials and experience to steer the country through this turbulent period if only the government can do the needful. It is exigent to have somebody in charge because, as it is, it is clear that the ongoing counter-terrorism campaign lacks proper coordination as a result of the absence of a synergy among the security agencies in the country. What easily come to mind are the United States’ Department of Homeland Security and the Counter-terrorism Strategy in the United Kingdom, two agencies that are solely devoted to checkmate terrorism and terrorists’ activities in both countries.

In the alternative, the government could appoint somebody in the mould of the coordinating Minister of Finance to coordinate this anti-terrorism war. If the government wishes, the person could be called Minister for Counter-terrorism or even Minister for Boko Haram.

March 19, 2014
Referendum, not National Conference

One of the most disturbing aspects of the just inaugurated National Conference is the very manner in which it was constituted. The selection and composition of delegates to the conference makes one wonder whether there is some truth in the commonly expressed theory that Nigeria is afflicted with a malaise so serious that no amount of wise leadership can bring the nation to its senses.

The clamour for a National Conference stems from the realisation that it is about time that the people of this country take control of their own destiny and use the power of democracy to resolve the many pressing problems that afflict their daily lives. The usurpation or denial of people’s rights in Nigeria has gone on for too long. The Independence Constitution was the product of the departing colonial authorities. The 1963 Republic Constitution was decided upon entirely by the Prime Minister and regional premiers of the day who merely amended the 1960 Constitution to make it conform to Republican status. The 1966 coup usurped democracy by replacing it with military rule. The 1979 Constitution was a missed opportunity for the people to adopt a constitution for themselves, when the Obasanjo led Military Government amended several aspects of the elected Constituent Assembly’s deliberations and of course our existing 1999 Constitution came into existence as a result of a Decree enacted by the Federal Military Government. The National Conference is yet another missed opportunity for the Nigerian people to prepare their own Constitution.

When a frame of government has been established, and a group of rulers elected to govern under it, the right to change the system under a new order or Constitution remains always with the people, just like the right to choose the rulers. It is an usurpation of powers for any government to assume to exercise that right, without a specific mandate from the people. My argument therefore is that since we already have a system of government in place, it would be unconstitutional for a National Conference to attempt to usurp the Constitution without first receiving a clear mandate from the electorate the source and donor of all political power. If the government and its organs are created by the 1999 Constitution, then it is logical that they can only have the power that is granted to them by the instrument from which they derive their existence. The National Assembly or the President have no specific or inherent power to convene a National Conference in order to change or prepare a new Constitution for the electorate neither can they alter the Constitution without first obtaining the support by resolution of at least 2/3 of the Houses of Assembly of the 36 states of the federation. That being the case, the electorate should have been given the right of direct consultation to convene a National Conference and prepare a new Constitution. A referendum in my view is the only democratic instrument that can give the National Assembly or the President the mandate to convene a National Conference to change our existing order or Constitution.

It is a mystery that no one has yet sued the federal government for initiating or attempting to initiate a national conference without first receiving a clear mandate from the people.

How much we miss the likes of the late legal luminary Chief Gani Fawehinmi. If he were alive, he would have surely taken the federal government on.

According to foremost constitutional lawyer Professor Ben Nwabueze (SAN) in his book “The Presidential Constitution of Nigeria”, a Constitution is an act of the people if it is made by them either directly in a referendum or through a convention or constituent assembly popularly elected for this purpose, subject or not to formal ratification by the people in a referendum.

This definition highlights yet another flaw in the National Conference. Apart from the fact that the delegates were not popularly elected, how can the deliberations of the conference ever be actualised or brought into effect? If for instance the delegates at the conference recommend that our system of government should change from Presidential to Parliamentary or perhaps suggest that we begin to operate on a regional basis, can such fundamental changes ever be brought about by a constitutional amendment? Surely our constitution will have to be jettisoned if such fundamental changes were to be brought about. It is for these reasons that the above issues have been labeled as forbidden areas of debate at the National Conference. The National Assembly may be continually empowered to amend the constitution, but it does not possess the power to dispense with it. In any case, would the National Assembly agree to subject such deliberations to a referendum at the end of the conference when it is quite obvious that if they do so their own position as legislators would be threatened? In any case subjecting the deliberations of the National Conference to a referendum at the end of the exercise would be like asking the electorate to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea. After all what would happen if the electorate is dissatisfied with the outcome of the conference in much the same way as they are disillusioned with the 1999 Constitution and our present structure/arrangement? It would mean that the electorate would be left with no choice at all.

This is why we ought to have conducted a referendum on this important issue at the beginning. A referendum at the onset would have determined what “We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria” really want. A referendum would have served as a barometer indicative of what various sections of the country want. So far, only perceived leaders of thought (not necessarily representative of the people and the various ethnic groups) have given their views on this issue. Nigeria we know is made up of more than 250 ethnic groups on the average. If we take about 50 of them to deliberate upon issues at a National Conference would this be fair? If you Google the official statistics on the composition of Nigeria you will find that those Nigerians aged between 1–14 make up roughly 43.9% of the population. Those between 15–24 make up 19.3% while those between 25-54 make up a total of roughly 30%. In total Nigerians between the ages of 1-54 make up about 83% of the population yet how many of these Nigerians in the above age brackets will be participating at the National Conference also bearing in mind that the parents of the Nigerian child aged between 1-14 which makes up 43.9% of the population are likely to fall within the 25-54 age bracket. Power must be given back to these people by enabling them to exercise responsibility for their own affairs. A simple question asking whether or not we want to re-write our constitution and/or re-structure our polity would easily have sufficed.

Thereafter, if the yes votes carry the day, the National Assembly would have been mandated to pass a bill to constitute a National Conference or organise elections into a Constituent Assembly for this purpose as the case may be. Most importantly a referendum would have done away with the government’s claim to sovereignty if the electorate had voted yes. Referendums as democratic instruments are readily available all over the world and are a common model in most democratic countries. They serve as a form of direct democracy. Countries in the European Union for example are making effective use of these instruments to ratify the E.U. Constitution. Likewise Britain our former colonial rulers will be conducting a referendum later this year to ascertain whether or not Scotland wants to continue to remain part of the United Kingdom. There is no particular reason why Nigeria should be any different in its own endeavors. Bearing in mind that we have a general election next year February, would it not have been far more convenient for us as a nation to place the referendum question next to the Presidential ballot box so that we can vote for both the presidential election and the referendum at the same time? Would it not be a good form of debate leading up to the Presidential election in the country in 2015?

•Kola-Balogun, is Commissioner for Youth, Sports and Special Needs, State of Osun.

March 19, 2014
Gusau and the generals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 16, 2014
Jonathan channels Shagari

In Nigerian politics, the more things change the more they remain the same. A cursory glance through the political scene and one could be forgiven for thinking they have been transported back to the Second Republic.

In the place of fresh thinking, the same old tricks are being exhumed in the hope that they would deliver the same results. Back in the day, a certain Commissioner of Police named Bishop Eyitene who was deployed to Anambra State interpreted his brief as giving then Governor Jim Nwobodo and his Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP) a torrid time. Until his removal, Joseph Mbu in Rivers appeared to have torn several pages out of Eyitene’s copy book.

Another gimmick deployed by the then President Shehu Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria (NPN) was the appointment of what were referred to as Presidential Liaison Officers (PLOs) in different states of the federation where the ruling party was in opposition. This provocative move came at a time when certain states – especially those controlled by the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) in the West – refused to recognise the Shagari presidency.

The PLOs were appointed ostensibly to monitor federal government projects and act as the president’s eyes and ears in those hostile states. In reality though, it was just another way of providing jobs for the boys. More importantly, the PLOs soon began acting as alternate governors.

As the elections of 1983 approached, they became more openly confrontational towards governors of the opposing parties. If the governor had a convoy, they ensured theirs was evenly longer and noisier. It was the perfect recipe for raising tensions and ensuring that the periods, before and after the elections, were marred by violence and bloodshed.

Today, the same script is being played out. Take a look at the cabinet that President Jonathan is reconstituting to lead the country into an election year. In all the states where the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) is in opposition, the ministers or likely ministerial nominees are ‘alternate governors’ – politicians who can make life difficult for the incumbent. That seems to be the primary consideration for getting into the cabinet.

That is why you have the Nyesom Wikes, Bonnie Harunas, Musiliu Obanikoros, Aminu Walis in the team. If the speculations are to be believed, very soon it would be the turn of the Gbemi Sarakis, Attahiru Baffarawas, Ibrahim Shekaraus to name just a few.

This new breed are even more powerful now that they have the power of the federal purse to play around with in a manner that the Second Republic PLOs would never have dreamt off. Even worse, today the moral restraints that would have made 80s politicians baulk at certain things have long since disappeared. Anything goes and the scandalous has lost the power to shock.

It is enough to make you shiver as we edge even closer to another critical election year.

March 16, 2014
Why Governor Shettima was right (I)

In a preface to today’s piece last week I said I would examine this morning the lamentation by Governor Ibrahim Kashim Shettima about the military’s apparent incapability to end the Boko Haram insurgency in his North-East region and the harsh response his remarks provoked from its commander-in-chief, President Goodluck Jonathan, and from some of the president’s men.

Governor Shettima had told the State House press corps shortly after his visit to the Villa on February 17 to brief the president about the upsurge of Boko Haram insurgency in his state since January, that the military seemed too ill-equipped, undermanned and insufficiently armed to defeat Boko Haram. Aminiya, the Hausa weekly newspaper in the stable of Media Trust Ltd, publishers of Daily Trust, provided perhaps the most graphic illustration of the background to the governor’s lamentation in a table it published of alleged Boko Haram killings since January in its edition of March 7.

There were, the newspaper said, ten attacks against villages and communities in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states between January 28 against Waga Chekawa which left 30 people dead and against Jakana on March 4 in which the casualty was 11. In between were the attacks on Kauri (83 dead), Konduga (34), Izge (106), Bama (60), Buni Yadi (59 pupils of the unity school located in the town which is in Yobe State), Michika and Shuwa (28), Mainok and Maiduguri bombing (97) and Mafa (30), making a total of 538 dead within a period of less than two months. In all these killings, most notably that of the school children which took place AFTER the governor went to brief the president, the military arrived at the scenes long after the killers had taken their time to carry out their acts of barbarity.

As the governor asked rhetorically on his second visit to brief the president again on the issue, “Have we ever succeeded in thwarting any of their (Boko Haram’s) plans? They went to Konduga and did what they wanted to do; they held sway for over four hours before they left. They were in Kauri, Izge…In a nutshell, what we are being confronted with is that we are in a state of war.”

It was against this background of the civilian population’s total helplessness from alleged Boko Haram killings that Governor Shettima told the press that it was “absolutely impossible to defeat Boko Haram unless more military personnel and hardware are deployed.”

At the same time, however, the governor went on to praise the army and the police for doing their best in the circumstance. “In fairness to the officers and men of the Nigerian army and the police,” he said, “they are doing their best given the circumstance they have found themselves. But honestly Boko Haram are better armed and better motivated than our own troops.”

Quite understandably, our president and commander-in-chief of our armed forces ignored Shettima’s sympathy for the troops and took strong exception to his unfavourable comparison of the military with what is widely regarded as a ragtag army of Islamic ideologues which probably number no more than a few thousand and whose funding cannot begin to compare with the country’s nearly trillion Naira yearly armed forces and the police.

The president displayed his anger at the governor’s remarks in his first media chat this year when he described them, in effect, as ill-informed and threatened to withdraw his troops to see if the ungrateful governor can cope without them. “If we pull out the military from Borno State,” the president said, “let us see if he will be able to stay in Government House.”

For the president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Africa’s most populous and most influential country, Dr. Jonathan’s reaction was rather churlish, to say the least. No one, including Shettima, I am sure, says the military is underfunded. On the contrary, there are many who would argue that for a country that is at peace with its neighbours, its military is overfunded, notwithstanding the internal insurrection it is faced with.

Obviously what Shettima was echoing was the undeniable fact that despite its huge budgets, our military has not been equipped, staffed and motivated enough to eliminate an insurrection in one, albeit vast corner, of the country. The proper reaction to Shettima’s remarks, therefore, was not to berate the messenger. Rather, it was to examine the veracity or otherwise of the message, especially since the messenger had built himself the reputation of speaking with the greatest restrain as the governor of the main theatre of the Boko Haram insurrection.

In an attempt to be more Catholic than the pope, two of the president’s men, namely Dr Doyin Okupe, the president’s spokesman on public affairs and Mr Labaran Maku, the minister of information and, until last week, the supervising minister of defence, displaced even less restrain than their principal in attacking Shettima. The governor, said Okupe, was an illiterate in military affairs, as if as a medical doctor who has been long on sabbatical he was any better knowledgeable than anyone in such affairs.

And as if to expose his own illiteracy in such matters Okupe could not even make up his mind whether what the country was faced with in the Northeast was war or not; “We are certainly not engaged in a conventional warfare,” he said on February 18 in his hastily convened press conference with the State House press corps in denunciation of Shettima, only to change his mind on February 28 and say “We are in a war and there is no gainsaying that fact. I am willing to admit that we are in a war situation.”

If to Okupe Shettima was an ignoramus on military affairs, to Maku the governor committed “serious indiscretion” against the military by his remarks for which he presumed to forgive the governor. “I think,” he said in handing over the Ministry of Defence to the new minister, Lt-Gen Aliyu Mohammed, last week, “that was serious indiscretion. And I can forgive that because may be he did not know the deeper work that was going on and is still going on in the Northeast.”

Obviously if government has been doing “deeper work” in the Northeast, the result has not been on the ground for anyone to see. Maku’s strange explanation of the resurgence of terror in the region was that the attacks were like the actions of a wounded and caged lion. Maku, his principal and others in government may choose to believe his simile but any sensible person knows that wounded and caged lions don’t have the luxury of taking their time and choosing which victims to attack. And the pattern of the attacks in the Northeast since January clearly suggests premeditation rather than desperation.

As I’ve said, the president and his men should not have assumed, as they obviously did, that Shettima’s lamentation was in bad faith. If they had given him the benefit of their doubts they would have seen that the evidences that his remarks were true were right there under their very noses.

One such evidence was contained in an advert in the Leadership of February 21, in which one, Hassan Mungono, attempted to defend the governor’s remark. The advert quoted the Commander of the 21 Armoured Brigade, Brigadier-General Mohammed Yusuf, at the time of an attack on Benisheikh by Boko Haram not too long ago, that the troops had to withdraw from the town in the face of the superior numbers and arms of the attackers. “They came in droves,” the advert quote the brigade commander as saying, “driving 20 pick-up vans followed by light armoured tanks , all wearing military colours. We had to retreat to our base after running out of ammunition.”

Anyone thinking the brigade commander as a Muslim is a closet Boko Haram, should refer to the lead story of The Guardian of November 21 last year. “Yesterday,” said the newspaper in that story, “the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen Azubuike, stressed the need for troops of the Seventh Division of the Nigerian Army in Borno to get more weapons to fight insurgents. The army, he said, has recorded some achievements but stressed the challenge of replacing ‘military arms and hardware’ lost to the insurgents in the last six months.”

Now, if this is not an admission that the army, as the lynchpin of the war against Boko Haram, is under armed and under-equipped, I don’t know what is.

Much earlier the same newspaper had carried a lead story in its July 2, 2012 edition which quoted some anonymous police officers of complaining about the neglect of staff welfare by the authorities. “We are in a war situation against faceless Boko Haram,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed police officer as saying, “but the government and police management are pretending as if nothing were happening. The force authorities are drafting Southerners to war zone without any welfare in terms of accommodation, allowances to cushion the hardship…Officers cluster in a cubicle, so-called officer’s mess, without amenities like water, accommodation, food, coupled with harsh weather. The world should know this.”

March 12, 2014